THE LIFE 

OF 

ROBERT TOOMBS 



BY 

ULRICH BONNELL PHILLIPS, Ph.D. 

PROFESSOR OF AMERICAN HISTORY IN THE 
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 



NEW YORK 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1913 

JU rights reserved 



>. . i 



c 



COPYRIGHT, 1913 
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Set up and ekctrolyped. Published June, igij 



THE'PLIMPTON'PRKSS 
NORWOOD- MASS'U'S'A 



V- 



©Cl.A85074a i^i^. 



TO THE MEMORY OF 
MY MOTHER 



THE LIFE 

OF 

ROBERT TOOMBS 



PREFACE 

AT the inception of this work it was intended to be a 
joint product by the late Colonel John C. Reed, of 
Atlanta, and myself. Colonel Reed, who was in his early 
manhood a captain in the Confederate army and in his 
later years when I knew him a genial and high-hearted 
veteran, was a life-long adorer of Robert Toombs. He had 
assembled a mass of his hero's correspondence, had col- 
lected a quantity of the humorous and epigrammatic say- 
ings in which Toombs was remarkably prolific whether in 
public or private speech, had made Toombs the leading 
figure in his excellent book. The Brothers' War, and had 
looked forward to writing his full biography. He at first 
cordially accepted my overtures for a joint biography; but 
soon afterward bethought him that the labor would be too 
great for his declining strength, and determined to confine 
himself to the preparation of a slender independent work 
on Toombs's "winged words." He thereupon most gener- 
ously handed over to me his treasured Toombs letters with 
the understanding that I was to decipher them and send him 
copies and that each of us should thereupon use the material 
at discretion. Colonel Reed unfortunately died, in January, 
1910, before he had made any progress with his task. He 
had appointed me his literary executor, but no papers of 
importance were found among his effects. It happens that 
I am neither a hero-worshipper nor a collector of pithy 
sayings — that my interest, indeed, lies more in social his- 
tory than in biography. But Toombs is as interesting 
to me as a type and product as he was to Colonel Reed 



viii PREFACE 

as an individual. And he was so clear in his analyses 
and so telling in his expressions that, though I have relied 
little upon his traditional sayings, I have quoted his authen- 
tic speeches more abundantly than is common in brief 
biographies. Whenever his words are given, the phrase 
is Hkely to be found both pointed and sparkling. There 
have been few Americans who habitually spoke and wrote 
as interestingly and tellingly as he. 

Toombs's favorite character in literature was FalstaflF; 
and he himself more or less unconsciously showed certain 
Falstaffian characteristics. But his braggadocio was com- 
bined with matter-of-fact-ness and high purpose; his comedy 
was mingled with tragedy; his self-indulgence stopped short 
at conviviality; and in public affairs he was among the most 
austere of men. When he quoted, as he often did, Fal- 
stafPs request to Prince Henry, "Rob me the exchequer," 
he invariably put the words into the mouths of the plunder- 
ers whom he was opposing. Colonel Reed was fond of 
discussing Toombs's Falstaffian phases, and his book would 
have been rich in humor. Something of these qualities in 
Toombs will doubtless appear in my narrative, but most of 
it must be read between the lines. I have been chiefly 
concerned with his incisive criticism of public issues and 
his now moderate, now headlong championship of public 
programmes. With little manifest mirth at his antics or 
fellow-feeling in his grief, I have endeavored to use his 
career as a central theme in describing the successive prob- 
lems which the people of Georgia and the South confronted 
and the policies which they followed in their efforts at 
solving them. In regard to the personal career of Toombs, 
my narrative probably demonstrates, what my studies have 
made plain to me, that Toombs was primarily an American 
statesman with nation-wide interests and a remarkable 
talent for public finance, but the stress of the sectional 
quarrel drove him, as it had driven Calhoun before him. 



PREFACE IX 

into a distinctly Southern partisanship at the sacrifice of 
his American opportunity. 

The location of all important documents quoted or referred 
to is given in the footnotes except in the case of numer- 
ous letters written by or to Toombs, Stephens or Howell 
Cobb. Virtually all of these, where no other indications 
are given, are embodied in a collection which I have edited 
for publication as volume two of the Report of the Ameri- 
can Historical Association for 191 1, which will be issued 
during the current year by the U. S. Government Printing 
Office. 

Numerous persons have given willing and courteous 
assistance in my pursuit of materials. Aside from Colonel 
Reed the chief ones of these have been Mr. W. J. DeRenne, 
of Wormsloe, near Savannah, who is the hospitable proprietor 
of the best private library yet assembled on the history of 
Georgia, Mr. William Harden, the librarian of the Georgia 
Historical Society at Savannah, Mrs. A. S. Erwin of Athens, 
Ga., Miss Julia A. Flisch of Augusta, Ga., Dr. J. F. Jame- 
son of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Mr. Gaillard 
Hunt of the Library of Congress, and Mr. Worthington C. 
Ford of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Miss Ger- 
trude Byrne of New Orleans and others of my students in 
the historical seminary at Tulane University during my 
residence there kindly afforded me the use of such of their 
notes as bore upon Toombs's career. My wife has given 
valuable criticism and zealous aid in the preparation of the 
book. 

ULRICH BONNELL PHILLIPS 

Ann Arbor, Michigan, 
April, 1913. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Country, the People, and the Politics of Middle 

Georgia 3 

'II. Toombs's Early Career 11 

III. A Southern Whig in Congress 25 

IV. The Proviso Crisis and the Compromise of 1850 . . 49 
V, The Georgia Platform 89 

VI. A Senator in the Fifties 116 

VII. Toombs on the Slaveholding Regime 155 

VIII. The Election of i860 167 

IX. The Stroke for Southern Independence .... 194 

X. The Stress of War 232 

XI. An Unreconstructed Georgian 252 

Index 275 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 



THE 
LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

CHAPTER I 

THE COUNTRY, THE PEOPLE AND THE POLITICS OF 
MIDDLE GEORGIA 

THE life and opinions of Robert Toombs are of interest 
on their own account as those of a vigorous, clear-cut 
and true-hearted leader in public affairs, advocating modera- 
tion where feasible and heroic remedies where necessary. 
His career, however, derives its chief significance from his 
typifying the life and demonstrating the problems, views 
and purposes of the community from which he sprang. He 
was striking as a man; he is illuminating as a representative. 

The piedmont region in the South had many talented 
spokesmen in Toombs's generation. The community while 
sturdy and self-trustful was conscious of its problems, alert 
to receive the opinions of its public men, eager to support 
their approved policies and to praise their worthy services. 
It is not strange that such a condition should produce in 
a single neighborhood not fifty miles square, in the Savannah 
drainage basin of the piedmont, Calhoun and McDuffie on 
the Carolina side of the river and Stephens and Toombs in 
Georgia. 

In ante-bellum parlance "Middle Georgia" was not the 
central portion of the state, but was the piedmont tract 
alc/ng the eastern boundary. The name originated about 
the time of the achievement of American independence, 
when the settlements in Georgia formed a slender line along 
the Savannah river. The upper portion of this line lay in 



4 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

the rugged and unfruitful mountains, the lower portion 
mainly comprised the sandy flats of the pine-barrens, while 
its middle stretches spread over the pleasant and fertile 
piedmont. No wonder it grew endeared to its people as 
"Middle Georgia." It lies as a rolling plateau, sloping 
from about a thousand feet above sea-level on the north- 
west down to a third of that elevation on its south-eastern 
edge at the fall-line of its rivers. Its hills and dales have a 
soil varying from red clay to gray sand, all made from the 
weathering of the underlying granite and similar rocks. 
Without prairies or extensive swamps, the country when 
white men entered it was covered with oak and hickory 
forests interspersed with tracts of pines; and this forest 
growth flourishing through the preceding centuries had 
covered the land with a layer of rich mold which rejoiced 
the hearts of the farmers in their clearings, but which needed 
careful husbanding to prevent its being washed away by 
the heavy rains common in the region. The soil and climate 
are suitable for producing with moderate success all the 
crops which flourish in temperate zones; but their special 
aptitude is for cotton, and the district's epoch of marked 
prosperity did not begin until the establishment of cotton 
production upon a substantial scale at the beginning of the 
nineteenth century. Ever since that time cotton growing 
has continued to be the chief industry, although in recent 
decades cotton manufacturing has flourished as well. 

Toombs's father. Major Robert Toombs, had commanded 
a force of Virginia troops operating against the British in 
Georgia at one time during the Revolution, and in reward 
was granted a tract of three thousand acres in Wilkes county 
about five miles from Fort Washington, which was then 
giving place to the town of Washington. On this tract he 
made his home in 1783. The earliest settlers in the dis- 
trict had preceded him by barely a decade. The farms 
were still nothing more than clearings, and the social regime 



THE MIDDLE-GEORGIA PEOPLE 5 

was for the most part as crude as upon the average American 
raw frontier. It happens that we have a glimpse of condi- 
tions at and about the village of Washington, written in 
1787 by Sarah Hillhouse, a bride recently arrived from New 
England, in a letter to her father: 

"There are a few, and a very few, Worthy good people in 
the country, near us, but the people in general are the most 
prophane, blasphemous set of people I ever heard of. They 
make it a steady practice (if they have money) to come to 
town every day if possible, and as Mr. Hillhouse is the only 
person who keeps Liquors, we have the whole throng around 
us, as many as fifty at a time, take one day with another, 
and sometimes when any public business is done, which is 
often, fourteen or sixteen hundred standing so thick that 
they look like a flock of Blackbirds, and perhaps not one in 
fifty but what we call fighting drunk. . . . They have spent 
in our cellar for liquor in one day Thirty Pounds Stg., and 
not a drop carried i rod from the store, but sit on a log and 
swallow it as quick as possible." * 

At that time Wilkes county was a backwoods settlement, 
largely comprised of disbanded Revolutionary troops, 
officers and men, who had been granted land by the state. 
That the rank and file should be rough-mannered was quite 
natural; but it is not to be assumed that everyone in the 
county flocked with the crowd which Mrs. Hillhouse 
described. The officers were likely to hold aloof, as were 
also the men of old families from Virginia and the Carolinas, 
who were beginning to enter the district in search of fresh 
lands to replace those which had been worn out by excessive 
tobacco cropping. 

With passing years conditions rapidly improved. In 
1790 the Indian boundary which till then had lain within 
twenty miles of Washington was moved a score of miles 
westward, and was again moved about forty miles further 

* The Alexander Letters, 1787-igoo. Savannah, Ga.. 1910 (privately- 
printed), pp. 16, 17. 



6 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

west in 1 802-1 804, Wilkes county was thus relieved of 
alarms from Indian forays and was likewise relieved of the 
roughest element of its own population, which drifted west 
behind the retreating Creeks and Cherokees. Meanwhile 
Whitney invented his gin in 1793; successful experiments 
in producing cotton in "Middle Georgia" upon a commer- 
cial scale in the later nineties brought brilliant profits, 
and the country promptly became a Mecca for well-to-do 
Virginians and Carolinians and their plantation forces. The 
hardships of the frontier and their replacement by easier 
conditions are indicated by Major Toombs's domestic 
fortunes. During his early years in Wilkes county he 
married and lost two wives in rapid succession; but his 
third wife, Catherine Huling, lived to a ripe age and reared 
six strong children. The fifth of these, born July 2, 18 10, 
was Robert Augustus, who dropped his middle name in early 
manhood, and who in his prime and ever after was endeared 
to all Georgians as "Bob Toombs." 

At the time of his birth the sparse clearings had been 
broadened and multiplied, and Wilkes county had become 
settled by a fairly dense population as American standards 
of density went in that generation; the rough manners had 
become softened, and the small farms were interspersed with 
plantations. Squads of negro slaves worked the broader 
fields, and their total number came to comprise a little 
more than half the population. Some of the earlier pioneers 
drew free lands in the lottery distribution of the new Indian 
cessions acquired by the state, and sold their Wilkes hold- 
ings to the incoming planters. Some of the yeomen pros- 
pered modestly and bought from the traders a few slaves 
to help them in their field work; and some continued as 
non-slaveholders to till their own fields unaided except by 
their wives and sons and daughters. As for the slave 
squads, most of them comprised from five to twenty laborers, 
and not three planters could be found in a day's journey 



THE MIDDLE-GEORGIA PEOPLE 7 

who owned above fifty slaves each. With the very poor 
traffic facilities prior to the building of railroads, the freight- 
ing of supplies from the seaboard was of course confined 
mostly to such essential supplies as could not be produced 
by domestic labor. All industry was rural, for the few 
widely separated villages were inhabited in the main only 
by merchants, court-house officials, lawyers and physicians. 
A small cotton factory was established in Wilkes county in 
181 1 because of the restraint then imposed upon foreign 
trade, and it doubtless prospered moderately during the 
war of 1 812; but the return of high cotton prices after that 
war again enlisted all available capital in plantation opera- 
tions, and for the rest of the ante-bellum period industrial 
energies were almost wholly devoted to agriculture. In 
normal times homespun comfort was the common reward 
of thrift, though little that savored of luxury prevailed. 
In manners there was fair sobriety, marked probity, 
frankness and vigor, pronounced individualism, general 
kindliness and occasional courtliness. It was the most whole- 
some community in the sturdy commonwealth. Major 
Toombs was one of the well-to-do planters, and young 
Robert, reared among the best advantages which the coun- 
tryside afforded, acquired the views and customs which pre- 
vailed around him, including the current opinions upon 
public questions. For example, the discussion of impress- 
ments which he heard in childhood gave him an enduring 
belief in British tyranny, and the struggle in his boyhood 
between Georgia and the United States government imbued 
him with a devotion to state rights. 

During the eighteen-twenties Alabama and Mississippi 
began to flood the market with their cotton and to depress 
its price, while in the Carolinas and "Middle Georgia'* 
the land was losing its fertility and crops were growing 
more meager. At the same time the people of the middle 
and eastern states were striving to increase the tariff pro- 



8 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

tectlon on the goods which they were selling to the cotton 
belt and to increase the federal expenditure for internal 
improvements in their own region. Indian lands, banking 
and slavery furnished additional issues. During the earlier 
decades of the century the people of Georgia had indulged 
in local faction-fighting at the expense of their attention to 
federal policy. The new issues in the later twenties and the 
thirties required the turning of attention afresh to congres- 
sional affairs, whereupon it was found that the old leaders 
were outworn and a new supply was necessary. The young 
men who responded to the call bore much the same stamp 
and largely maintained the traditions of those whose mantles 
had fallen upon them, except that they based their issues 
more upon measures than upon personalities. The previous 
generation had comprised men of marked strength, such as 
James Jackson, Abraham Baldwin, William H. Crawford, 
John and Elijah Clarke, and George M. Troup. Some of 
these were rough, some of them polished; some were short- 
sighted partisans, some longsighted champions of sound 
statecraft; some headlong, some prudent, but all were 
vigorous, indomitable, high-spirited, plain in life and plain 
of speech, incorruptible, and devoted to the commonwealth 
of Georgia. Of these the Clarkes had been mere faction 
leaders without constructive policy; and Baldwin, a con- 
structive statesman, had been cut off by an untimely death. 
Jackson, Crawford and Troup, the successive leaders of the 
faction later known as the State Rights party and then merged 
with the Whigs, shaped the political traditions of the state. 
Jackson in his speeches and Troup in his state-papers were 
ardent, even headlong advocates, sometimes suffering 
defeat by very reason of their violence, but oftener succeed- 
ing in their purpose of overwhelming their opponents. 
Crawford was more quiet, more genial and more versatile, 
succeeding sometimes by stalwart argument, sometimes by 
more ingratiating persuasion; but suffering final defeat 



THE MIDDLE-GEORGIA PEOPLE 9 

in his ambition for the Presidency by letting it appear that 
he relied rather upon secret scheming than upon his merits 
as a sound and vigorous public servant. Crawford in fact 
rendered splendid service in Congress and the Cabinet until 
about 1816 when he unfortunately began a long resting upon 
his oars which had not ended when he was stricken with 
paralysis. As regards policies, Jackson, Crawford and 
Troup were all champions of state rights, Indian expulsion, 
low tariff, conservative finance, and the safeguarding of all 
Southern interests. 

Jackson died in 1807, Crawford was paralysed in 1824, 
and Troup retired from public life in 1833. To fill their 
places a number of aspirants came forward possessing a 
variety of qualities but none of whom for a decade or two 
were at once talented and vigorous enough to establish 
a definite ascendency. George R. Gilmer and Wilson 
Lumpkin, of plain manners and ordinary ability, were zeal- 
ous champions of Georgia in the Cherokee struggle; John 
Forsyth and John M. Berrien were polished gentlemen and 
brilliant speakers, but were opportunists in policy. The 
former a diplomat, the latter a constitutional lawyer, both 
were so much engrossed with forms and methods that they 
were disqualified for initiating and resolutely maintaining 
policies through good and evil fortune. Augustin S. Clay- 
ton was public-spirited enough to launch a cotton factory 
at his home at Athens in 1858, and to declare in Congress 
a few years later that his profits in manufacturing were 
unreasonably great under the tariff, and was sufficiently 
staunch a judge on the Georgia bench to assert in defiance 
of the United States Supreme Court in the Cherokee issue: 
"I only require the aid of public opinion and the arm of the 
executive authority, and no court on earth besides our own 
shall ever be troubled with this question"; but he destroyed 
his availability as a leader by his enthusiastic endorsement 
of nullification in sympathy with the excited South Carolin- 



10 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

ians but against the more moderate judgment of the bulk of 
the Georgia people. On the whole, during the thirties 
Georgia was relatively devoid of spokesmen except in regard 
to the Cherokee struggle. There were new issues pressing 
to be formulated, vital causes demanding champions, and 
a people eager to welcome any leaders who should ring true. 
In response to this demand there emerged into public life 
Robert Toombs and his fellows of the group reaching their 
prime in the forties and fifties and making Georgia the 
pivotal state of the South in the secession movement. 



CHAPTER II 

TOOMBS'S EARLY CAREER 

AS boy and as man Toombs differed from the standard 
manly product of the plantation regime only in being 
unusually vigorous, talented and self-confident. The free- 
dom from care in which planters' sons were reared, the abun- 
dant opportunity for indoor pranks and outdoor sports, 
the affectionate and indulgent admiration of the slaves, 
the camaraderie of the neighbors' children, added their 
influence to the fond care of parents, the devotion of brothers 
and sisters and the somewhat capricious discipline of primi- 
tive schoolmasters in the stamping of character. Matur- 
ing with normal speed, young Toombs was active and alert, 
fun-loving and fond of striking situations whether of his own 
or of others' making. The rollicking boy was father to the 
boyish man with his great faculty for hilarious laughter, 
and his occasional failure while controlling others to control 
himself. 

From his plantation home young Toombs went at the age 
of fourteen to the University of Georgia, then more com- 
monly known as Franklin College, at Athens. There his 
fellow-students, only a few score in number, were nearly all 
planters' sons like himself, liberty-loving and not too studi- 
ously inclined; the faculty was meager, the resources scant, 
the curriculum unalluring and the discipline stringent. 
Moses Waddell, the president, had had a long, successful 
career as a master of a private academy, and carried academy 
methods into the conduct of the college. Alonzo Church, 
the young professor of mathematics, was a willing adminis- 



12 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

trator of Waddell's rules. Thirty years later when Church 
was himself president of the college he required of his pro- 
fessors the same dormitory espionage over the students 
which he had performed under Waddell, and the brothers, 
John and Joseph LeConte resigned their chairs and pursued 
in more congenial surroundings their brilliant careers as 
scientists. Some of the most talented teachers have in all 
ages refused to be taskmasters and policemen; and thou- 
sands of youths at college have maintained that if they were 
not to be led, they would not be driven. Alexander H. 
Stephens, who attended Franklin College a few years later 
than Toombs, lived in Dr. Church's own household during 
his whole course without any friction; but Stephens was a 
frail, sober and conscientious youth, while Toombs was full- 
blooded, self-indulgent and flamboyant. In their prime 
these twain were wonderfully congenial and kindred in their 
outlook, but in youth they were radically unlike. Stephens, 
painfully introspective, would take a certain gloomy pleasure 
in what savored of martyrdom, while in Toombs dry text- 
books, dull drillmasters, and stringent regulations could 
inspire neither dread nor loyalty, nor gain long submission. 
In his first and second years he probably followed the fixed 
routine, keeping up with the classwork easily and finding 
large leisure to romp with his fellows and apparently also 
to get acquainted with a few favorite characters in litera- 
ture, particularly Falstaff^ and Don Quixote, and to exchange 
views with any with whom he might upon current questions 
of politics. By his third year, when he was sixteen years 
old, he had mastered the ins and outs of college life, pierced 
the foibles of his professors, developed a precocious talent 
in oratory, and acquired a nonchalance which proved the 
ruin of his career at Franklin College. 

While records of Toombs as a student are scant, the col- 
lege community at Athens treasures a number of traditions 
concerning him, of which two relate to the manner of his 



TOOMBS'S EARLY CAREER 13 

leaving college. The first runs to the eflFect that near the 
end of his third year, after several previous conflicts with the 
authorities, he was about to be reported by a proctor for a 
breach of the rules, whereupon Toombs hurried to the presi- 
dent in advance of the proctor and obtained an honorable 
dismissal from the college. Then when later in the day 
Dr. Waddell meeting him on the campus began to chide him, 
the youth informed the president with hauteur that he was 
addressing one not under his authority but a free-born 
American citizen. The second legend runs that after this 
Toombs stayed on at Athens till commencement, biding 
his time for a culminating escapade. The college chapel 
of that day, standing on the site of the present one which 
dates from 1832, was a small structure of boards whose 
furthest interior could easily be reached by a strong voice 
from without the building, particularly in the warm August 
commencement season when all the windows and doors were 
thrown open. Directly in front of the chapel and not twenty 
yards from its door stood a giant oak whose spreading 
branches would shade a throng of listeners. And the story 
runs that, mounting an improvised rostrum under the tree 
at the hour when his fellows approved by the faculty had 
begun their programme of speeches in the chapel, young 
Toombs began an address in such vigorous tones, with such 
eloquent phrasing and such telling humor that the audience 
within began to quit their seats and drift out of the building 
to enjoy the novel occasion; and Toombs did not conclude 
his harangue till the speakers inside had been left with but 
empty benches before them. Whether this tale be true in 
its details no man may say, but for many years before the 
disappearance of the old tree it was pointed out as the 
"Toombs Oak," the showpiece of the campus, and as such 
it was held in affectionate regard by the quickly succeeding 
generations of students. In the present writer's under- 
graduate days there in the middle eighteen-nineties its top 



14 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

had broken ofF and its middle was hollow with decay. As 
the seasons passed it then lost branch after branch until 
but a stump remained; and now one of the classes has 
placed a marble sun-dial to mark the spot where flourished 
the oak and the rebel Toombs. 

The self-willed youngster had doubtless received more 
impress from affairs without than within the classroom dur- 
ing his residence at the college. The board of trustees 
comprised the leading politicians of the state, and at their 
meetings, as was commonly known at the time, there was 
more discussion of party slates than of college administra- 
tion. During the decade of the twenties in fact the annual 
meeting of the trustees at commencement served as the 
official caucus of the Troup or State Rights party. The 
citizens of Athens, furthermore, were alert in political 
matters and occasionally held massmeetings to discuss the 
issues confronting the state. These meetings were held 
in the college chapel, where of course many of the students 
were interested listeners. The students also had flourish- 
ing debating societies of their own, whose weekly discussions 
were by no means confined to classical topics. In 1828, 
for example, the students adopted a resolution to appear 
at the commencement exercises in homespun garments 
as a protest against the protective tariff; the board of trus- 
tees officially commended their patriotic demonstration; 
and under Augustin S. Clayton's leadership the citizens held 
a great anti-tariff massmeeting in the chapel. Toombs 
had taken his leave before this time, but he had been present 
during the earlier developments which led up to this cli- 
max, and doubtless had political ambition and state-rights 
predilections indelibly stamped upon him by the regime. 

After his exit from Athens, Toombs was sent by his guar- 
dian to Union College, New York, from which he was 
graduated in 1828. He then studied law at the University 
of Virginia, and returning home was admitted to the bar 



TOOMBS'S EARLY CAREER 15 

in March, 1830, after examination in open court at Eiberton 
by William H. Crawford who was spending his declining 
years as a circuit judge, though still dreaming of presiden- 
tial honors. Toombs married Miss Julia DuBose in the 
same year and began the practise of law in the town of 
Washington while still but twenty years of age. For the next 
six or seven years his professional life was that of the average 
promising and rising young lawyer. He read law assidu- 
ously, rode the circuit of the neighboring counties regularly, 
listened attentively to the arguments of his elders at the 
bar, handled his own cases with energy, and sought out and 
remedied his own shortcomings. He relieved the monotony 
of the lawyer's life by occasional speeches on the hustings 
in support of the candidates of the State Rights party, 
and once when there was an alarm of war with the Creeks 
he plunged into the organization of a company of volunteers 
and as its captain reached the scene of hostilities only to 
find that peace had been restored and his company must 
be disbanded. In his domestic life the only events in these 
years were the births of his three children. With a true 
mate in his wife and a friend-in-need in his brother Gabriel, 
Toombs was adored and adoring in his family circle, as 
radiant in its tranquillity as he was in the most exhilarating 
strife at the bar or in the forum. His domestic felicity was 
in these years and long afterwards a spur in his labors and 
an anchor against recklessness in public policy and private 
conduct. He was throughout life also a kindly master to 
his slaves, a prudent manager, a cordial neighbor, an eager 
host, a firm friend and a guileless foe. His blemishes were an 
occasional too great impetuousness and a fondness for strong 
drink which he held in check until the defeat of his patriotic 
policies, the death of his last remaining daughter and the 
chronic illness of his wife in the closing years of his life broke 
his power of resistance. 

The story of Toombs's progress at the bar has been told 



l6 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

by the late Colonel John C. Reed who began practise in the 
same circuit in the fifties and adopting Toombs as his hero, 
began early to gather data on his career. His account, 
though not as full as he hoped to write, can hardly be 
improved by a layman writing in the twentieth century: * 

" For four years the famous William H. Crawford was the 
judge of the circuit. Toombs was born into the Crawford 
faction, and the judge . . . gave him favor from the first. 
The courts were full of lucrative business. The old dockets 
show that in five years Toombs was getting his full share 
in his own county and the adjoining ones. The diligent 
attention that he gave every detail of preparation of his 
cases had in a year or two after his call made him first 
choice of every eminent lawyer for junior. One of these was 
Francis T. Cone, a native of Connecticut. . . . Toombs, 
who had known the great American lawyers of his time 
always said after his death in 1859 that Cone was the best 
of them all. . . . Another of these was [Joseph Henry] Lump- 
kin. He is, I believe, the most eloquent man that Georgia 
ever produced. . . . Whether Toombs had them as asso- 
ciates or as adversaries, they were always in these early 
years of his at the bar, in his eye. With . . . unremitted 
attentiveness . , . and a receptivity always active and 
greedy, he seems to have soon appropriated all of Cone's 
law and all of Lumpkin's advocacy. ... In due time when 
Cone or Lumpkin were with him, he would be pushed for- 
ward, young as he was, into some important place in court 
conduct. I myself have heard Lumpkin tell that the great- 
est forensic eloquence he had ever heard was a rebuke by 
Toombs — then some twenty-seven years old — of the zeal 
with which the public urged on the prosecution of one of 
their clients on trial for murder. The junior — the evi- 
dence closed — was making the first speech for the defense. 
As he went on in a strong argument, the positiveness with 
which he denied all merit to the case for the state angered 
the spectators outside of the bar, and a palpable demonstra- 
tion of dissent came from some of them, which the presid- 
ing judge did not check as he ought to have done. Toombs 

* J. C. Reed, The Brothers^ War, pp. 218-221. (Copyrighted by Little, 
Brown & Co.) 



TOOMBS'S EARLY CAREER 17 

strode at once to the edge of the bar, only a raiHng some four 
feet high separating him from these angry men, and chastised 
them as they merited. His invective culminated in denoun- 
cing them as bloodhounds eager to slake their accursed thirst 
in innocent blood. These misguided ones were brought 
back to proper behavior, and with them admiration of the 
fearless and eloquent advocate displaced their hostility and 
carried upon an invisible wave an influence in favor of the 
accused over the entire community and even into the jury 
box. And the narrator, who was one of Toombs's greatest 
admirers, told with fond recollection how the popular billows 
were laid by his junior, and how he himself took heart and 
found the way to an acquittal which he feared he had lost. 
. . . [Toombs] divined what offered cases are unmaintainable 
more quickly and declined them more resolutely than any 
one I ever knew. So free was he from illusion that he could 
not contend against plain infeasibility. It was impossible for 
clients, witnesses or juniors to blind him to the actual chances. 
For ten years or more, commencing with 1867, I observed 
him in many nisi prius trials, and I noted how infrequently, 
as compared with others, he had either got wrong as to his 
own side, or misanticipated the other. But now and then 
it would develop that the merits were decidedly against 
him. He would at once, according to circumstances, pro- 
pose a compromise, frankly surrender, or, if it appeared very 
weak, toss the case away as if it was something unclean." 

It was during Toombs's fourth year on the circuit that he 
made the acquaintance of Alexander H. Stephens, two years 
his junior, and instituted that Damon and Pythias friend- 
ship which lasted their lives long. Thirty years afterward 
Stephens wrote of their first meeting: 

"Toombs was at the court when I was admitted. Fwas 
not introduced to him, however. The next week I went over 
to Wilkes, and there we became personally acquainted; 
but how I do not recollect. Our acquaintance soon grew 
to intimacy. We were associated in some cases in 1835; 
in 1836 we were very friendly, and by this time always 
occupied the same room when we went on circuit. In 1838 
he proposed to lend me money to travel for my health. We 
had been in the legislature together in 1837. He attended 



l8 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

to nearly all the business that my brother could not do when 
I was gone." * 

Stephens had already begun to sprout political wings 
by making an address in championship of the principle of 
state rights on the fourth of the same July in which he was 
admitted to the bar; and in 1836 he entered the state legis- 
lature, a year ahead of Toombs. It was quite possibly in 
response to Stephens's urging that Toombs added state- 
craft to law as a field for his ambition. 

In 1837 most of the earlier issues in Georgia politics had 
reached adjustment and passed into history; but their 
impress was left upon the thought of the people and the 
alignment of parties. The Creek and Cherokee crises had 
been passed in 1825 and 1832 in such way that Georgians 
prided themselves upon the victory of their state and were 
ready for another brush with the federal government if a 
new occasion should arise. The tariff struggle had been 
ended by the compromise of 1833 in such way that the cotton- 
planting interest, while generally disapproving the doctrine 
of nullification, denounced Jackson's threat of coercion and 
swore fresh allegiance to state rights. As regards party 
alignments, the Troup and Clarke factions had lost their 
original leaders and had come to support measures rather 
than men. The Clarke faction, now calling itself the Union 
party, held fast to its alliance with the Jacksonian Democ- 
racy; the Troup following, now calling itself the State Rights 
party, reacted against Jackson's ruthlessness concerning the 
rights of the states and of Congress. In the campaign of 
1836 this party joined the general rally of groups throughout 
the country in the effort to defeat Van Buren, and carried 
the vote of Georgia for Hugh L. White as a "State-Rights 
Whig." The triumph of Van Buren in the electoral college 
merely prodded his Georgia opponents to greater exertions. 

* Johnston and Browne, Life of Alexander H. Stephens, p. 89. 



TOOMBS'S EARLY CAREER 19 

In the fall election of 1837 Toombs as a Whig nominee won 
his first candidacy and was sent to the legislature in spite 
of the fact that Wilkes county was accustomed to cast 
Democratic majorities. He was probably elected less as a 
Whig than as a favorite son. He was returned to the lower 
house of the assembly at each following annual election 
until 1843, except that of 1841 when he was not a candidate. 

In these years the legislature was troubled mainly with 
financial problems. During the previous decade the whole 
country had been indulging in business inflation. The 
prices of cotton, slaves and land were rising to extraordinary 
heights, and the cotton belt was revelling in the "flush times." 
With citizens eager to clear new lands and buy more slaves 
to raise more cotton, the state governments had been per- 
suaded to raise money on public credit and lend it to their 
citizens at moderate interest rates for private uses. As an 
item in this regime the state of Georgia had estabHshed in 
1828 a curious institution called the Central Bank of Georgia 
with capital consisting of all moneys, bonds and stocks owned 
by the state and all debts due it. The directors were author- 
ized to issue bank notes at discretion and were required to 
distribute most of its available funds in loans to citizens 
throughout Georgia. The institution was in eff"ect the state 
treasury subjected to the control of a special commission 
instructed to administer its resources in accordance with the 
practises of wild-cat banking. At the same time the laws 
of the state permitted the private chartered banks to issue 
notes to the amount of twice their capital. The general 
regime of course invited panic. Revulsion came in 1837 
when credit was disturbed in the Northern commercial 
centers, and was renewed in 1839 when cotton prices after 
a temporary bolstering collapsed and stayed in collapse for 
five disastrous years. 

It was just in this period of stress, 1837 to 1844, when the 
assembly was wrestling with proposals for mitigating the 



20 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

calamities, that Toombs was in the lower house, first as 
a private member and then as chairman successively of 
the committees on judiciary, internal improvements, and the 
state of the republic. The fight was heroic between the 
advocates of further inflation as a cure for the effects of 
inflation on one side, and the champions of sound money 
and rugged honesty on the other; and in each succeeding 
December session Toombs was steadily in the thickest of 
the fight as a leader of the conservatives. In 1837 he 
opposed unsuccessfully a bill to authorize the Central Bank 
to borrow ^150,000 with which to complete a series of citi- 
zens' loans; in 1838 he and Stephens defeated a bill to 
increase that bank's capital by ^5,000,000; and in 1842 
when its notes had depreciated and the bank was heavily 
involved, he not only fought against a proposal to prolong 
its activities but upon suffering defeat by 116 votes to 71 
he and thirty-six other members presented a formal protest 
whose phrasing indicates Toombs's own authorship. It 
contended that the experiment of banking upon the credit 
of the state had already proved a failure, contributing 
largely to the destruction of the public credit and sullying 
the honor of the state; that by the inherent vices of the 
system, and by its mismanagement and consequent losses, 
the bank had created a stern necessity for universal and 
heavy taxation to sustain the public credit, and it denounced 
the bill just passed because of its prolongation of irresponsi- 
bility.* A similar battle was waged over proposals for 
staying the execution of mortgages. In 1840 the Governor 
in a special message urged the enactment of a stay-law. 
Toombs oppbsed it by his speeches and by a telling report 
from his committee, and defeated it for the time being. 
The question then went before the people and the stay-law 
policy became generally adopted by the Democratic party. 
When in 1842 the proposal was again introduced Toombs 
* Journal of the Georgia House of Representatives, 1842, pp. 446, 447. 



TOOMBS'S EARLY CAREER 21 

was chairman of the judiciary committee, to which in ordi- 
nary routine the bill should have been referred. Hoping to 
thwart opposition, the Democrats, who were in majority, 
referred the bill to a select committee of three, from which 
of course Toombs was excluded. This committee in due 
time endorsed the bill in a majority report signed by the two 
Democratic members; but Mr. Echols, the Whig member, 
presented a minority report, apparently written by Toombs, 
denouncing the majority's views and declaring stay-laws 
to be both unconstitutional and inexpedient, in that they 
worked moral wrong by legalizing the violation of moral and 
legal obligations and worked political injustice by depressing 
one portion of the community for the benefit of another. 
"The legislature of this or any other state," it concluded, 
"cannot make allowances for the miscalculation or mis- 
fortune of its citizens. The great principles of political 
equality, of truth and eternal justice, are as much violated 
by robbing the few for the benefit of the many as by plunder- 
ing the many for the benefit of the few. A good and just 
government will do neither — an honest people will oppose 
both." * This denunciation was too heavy a load for the 
bill to carry. Toombs in defeating the proposal was follow- 
ing in the path which William H. Crawford had blazed in 
Georgia nearly forty years before. 

Another fight for responsibility arose over a railroad ques- 
tion. In the act of 1836 providing for the building of the 
state-owned Western and Atlantic railroad from the site 
of the present city of Atlanta to that of Chattanooga, it 
had been provided that the Governor should subscribe upon 
certain conditions to one-fourth of the capital. stock of any 
companies which might be established to tuild railroads 
from the Western and Atlantic terminus to any of the towns, 
Athens, Madison, Milledgeville, Forsyth, or Columbus. 
In 1842 the Monroe Railroad Company, chartered to build 

* Journal of the Georgia House of Representatives, 1842, pp. 113, 137. 



22 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

from Atlanta to Forsyth, fulfilled the requirements and the 
Governor made a subscription of ^200,000 on behalf of the 
state as by law directed, and so notified the legislature in a 
special message. But the House, in view of the stress of 
the times, refused by a vote of 100 to 72 to make an appro- 
priation to carry out the contract. Whereupon Toombs 
and thirty of his colleagues presented a formal protest to 
the effect that, without wishing to impugn the motives of 
any man, they believed that they would be false to their 
principles did they not record their entire dissent to what 
they regarded as a violation of the plighted faith of the 
state.* Another issue upon which Toombs was a vehement 
advocate of scrupulous good faith was that of the Galphin 
claim, which will be treated in a following chapter. 

As regards the then mooted question of completing the 
Western and Atlantic railroad, Toombs held a middle posi- 
tion, favoring activity in construction in periods when state 
bonds were bringing good prices, and suspension of work 
when credit was dear. As to state aid to railroads projected 
by private corporations, he seems to have been neutral. 
He voted for a popular referendum on this question in 1837. 
In the same year he supported a resolution for a plebiscite 
also upon the question whether the state should establish 
a supreme court. This however does not mean that he was 
neutral upon the court question, but that he was trying to 
appeal to the people over the heads of an obstructive legis- 
lature. Both of these referendum resolutions passed the 
House, but were killed in the Senate. 

Year after year Toombs labored in behalf of the proposed 
supreme court as a cap-piece to the judiciary system of the 
state. Just after the close of the session of 1842, for example, 
he wrote to Stephens: "The session passed off well. We 
succeeded in carrying everything but the Court — lost 
that in the Senate by three votes. When I was in Milledge- 

* Journal of the Georgia House of Representatives, 1842, pp. 276, 277. 



TOOMBS'S EARLY CAREER 23 

ville * I thought its passage would have injured the party 
but benefitted the country; but from the general regret 
expressed at its loss among the people since we adjourned, 
I am inclined to think it would have been popular with the 
people." t In the following session the measure was finally 
enacted. 

Of gallery-playing resolutions for use in the strife of the 
national parties there was very little during Toombs's 
service in the legislature. In the session of 1838 both he 
and Stephens voted against a resolution denying the con- 
stitutionality of a United States Bank, which was adopted 
by 90 votes to 67. On a resolution denouncing the "pet 
bank" system of Van Buren, rejected at the same session 
by 58 to 103, Toombs voted no while Stephens voted aye. 
Toombs was clearly more concerned with sound policy than 
with party advantage. 

One question only seems to have arisen in the legislature 
in these years involving the sectional relations of slavery; 
and here Toombs forced the fighting. Certain citizens of 
Maine had taken slaves away from Savannah in their ship, 
and when the Governor of Georgia demanded their extradi- 
tion for trial the Governor of Maine refused to deliver them. 
In the session of 1840 when a bill on this subject was pend- 
ing, Toombs introduced as a substitute: "A bill to protect 
the slave property of the people of the state of Georgia from 
the aggressions of the people of the state of Maine, to con- 
fiscate the property of citizens and inhabitants of Maine 
within the limits of this state, and to seize the person of such 
citizens and inhabitants and other persons coming into this 
state from the state of Maine." { The House, however, 
and Toombs himself, were persuaded against the policy of 
retaliation. It enacted instead by a vote of 183 to 44, with 

* The capital of the state. 

t Letter of Toombs to Stephens, Jan. i, 1844. 

X Journal of the Georgia House oj Representatives, 1840, p. 311. 



24 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

Toombs in the affirmative, that vessels from Maine should 
in future be searched at the time of their departure from 
Georgia ports. 

So much for the details of Toombs's work in the legisla- 
ture. As early as the close of 1839 an incisive critic of the 
personnel of the House published the following estimate: 

" Robert A. Toombs : This member possesses high genius, 
thorough acquaintance with mankind, and is distinguished 
by physical and moral courage. Often eloquent, always 
sensible and convincing, he is a formidable adversary in 
debate. He is a bold, fluent, sarcastic speaker, ever ready, 
ever fortunate and clear in illustration. Frank and careless 
in his manner, he appears to be wholly indifferent to rhetori- 
cal embellishment. With infinite tact and sagacity, with a 
commanding talent for the management of men, it is with 
himself to select his own rank among the rising men of the 
state. We have heard with regret that he has declined 
emphatically a place on the congressional ticket of the 
State Rights party. Having a handsome fortune, we know 
of no gentleman who could so well sacrifice something to 
the public, and no one whom we would contribute more 
cordially to elevate."* 

By the time of the congressional election of 1844 Toombs 
had completed a record in Georgia legislative affairs which 
not only advertised his talents but declared his political 
position. He stood conspicuously as a Whig of the Craw- 
ford tradition, more devoted to soundness in policy than 
to party advantage, concerned mainly with financial and 
social questions and little with constitutional refinements 
or abstruse theories of any sort, upholding state rights 
merely as a barrier against possible oppression, moderate 
upon all issues except where public or private honor was 
involved and except where Southern institutions were 
threatened with extraneous interference. Such was Toombs 
when he was eagerly elected congressman in 1844, and such 
he remained throughout the years of his public service. 
* Georgia Journal (Milledgeville, Ga.), Dec. 31, 1839. 



CHAPTER III 

A SOUTHERN WHIG IN CONGRESS 

TO understand the character and pohcies of the South- 
ern wing of the Whig party in the eigh teen-forties 
it is necessary to consider the condition of Southern society 
and the origin of the Whig coahtion.* 

The negro-slave-plantation system created and main- 
tained in the Southern community a great special vested 
interest, clashing from time to time with the local non- 
slaveholding interest and with the manufacturing interests 
in the Northern states. The planters were always a minor- 
ity of the voting population in their several states and in the 
United States; and for the sake of security to their regime 
they were obliged to find and retain allies in both local and 
national politics. They had to check the progress of theo- 
ries and policies disturbing to the established order; when 
campaigns were impending against them they had if possible 
to divide the opposition; when defeat was all but sure they 
had either to disarm their antagonists by soft words or rout 
them by counter attack as the case might require. In 
short when once the lines were drawn, the planting interest 
because of its minority position could be saved from a steady 
series of encroachments and defeats only by constant alert- 
ness and expert strategy. 

The waves of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian Democracy 
successively put the conservatives of the South (the planters 

* The early pages of this chapter have been adapted from the writer's 
essay "The Southern Whigs, 1834-1854," in the volume oi Essays in Ameri- 
can History, dedicated to F. J. Turner. N. Y., 1910. 



26 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

and their allies) upon the defensive. Neither of these move- 
ments paid heed to the peculiar basis of plantation industry, 
and each in turn threatened danger to the fabric. The 
champions of the established regime had to support it 
against each of these waves, and to use for their purpose 
such means and such allies as could be found. Hence 
the career of the Southern Federalists * in Jefferson's time 
and the Southern Whigs in Jackson's. 

When the propaganda of Jacksonian Democracy swept 
the country in the late eighteen-twenties and early thirties, 
it bade fair to destroy a variety of adjustments and to injure 
a variety of interests. Its contempt for checks and bal- 
ances promised a regime of government by impulse instead 
of by deliberation. Its hostility to corporations, capital, 
privileges and aristocracy drove all who were friendly to 
these things, as well as those who were temperamentally 
conservative, into resistance to all that was Jacksonian. 
For the sake of defense it was necessary to organize a 
country-wide party of opposition with membership as com- 
prehensive as possible. All minor differences which might 
hinder the new coalition must be subordinated, all dislike 
of Jackson or his lieutenants must be fanned, all old con- 
troversies which might be useful must be revived, all the 
local factions available must be attracted, and all talented 
leaders, old and new, must be enlisted and be given free 
opportunity to make merit with the people. 

When in 1834 the first steps were taken to establish the 
Whig party, politics throughout the country were highly 
decentralized. Local issues ruled; and hardly anything 
less than the shock of the Jacksonian surge could have 
centralized politics and have simplified conditions into a 
national two-party regime. The simplification, as we shall 
see, was more apparent than real, and each of the parties 

* U. B. Phillips, "The South Carolina Federalists," in the American 
Historical Review, XIV, 529-543; 731-743; 776-790. 



A SOUTHERN WHIG IN CONGRESS 27 

was destined to have chronic trouble in maintaining its own 
soUdarity. The Democracy was a unit in Jackson's day, 
it is true, but thereafter it was in frequent danger of spHt- 
ting asunder. The Whig party was from its birth to its 
death a coalition of broad-constructionists mainly Northern, 
and state-rights men mainly Southern; and the Southern 
wing itself was heterogeneous and at times discordant. The 
party was usually incoherent, always beset with troubles, 
unable to wage vigorous campaign except by straddling upon 
some and glossing over other pending questions and appeal- 
ing from judgment to enthusiasm; and of course it achieved 
victories only at the peril of dissolution. Nevertheless the 
. Whigs, South and North, exerted strong influence upon their 
times and have left an impress upon later generations. 

In every Southern state old enough to have begun to 
emerge from frontier conditions, there prevailed in this 
period of Whig party origin an alignment of local factions 
opposed over local issues. In Kentucky the occasion for 
strife was banking and debts, in Tennessee taxation, in 
Georgia Indian relations, and in the Carolinas, Virginia 
and Maryland the distribution of representation and the 
building of internal improvements. Federal problems were 
of active influence also, as affecting local interests, with the 
tariff" issue focussing in South Carolina and the issue of 
Supreme Court jurisdiction in Virginia and Georgia; and 
finally the development and maintenance of state factions 
was greatly aided, particularly in Tennessee and Georgia, 
by the prevalence of personal feuds and friendships, and 
everjrwhere by the existence of more or less definite class 
distinctions in society. In most communities the lower 
classes and the factions controlled by them were of course 
the first to join the Jacksonian movement. But in the 
presidential elections of 1828 and 1832 when the former 
Crawford following was drifting leaderless, the two oppos- 
ing factions in each of several states, though supporting rival 



28 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

slates of electors, endorsed Jackson in common as against 
Adams or Clay. This was conspicuous in Georgia and North 
Carolina. But before Van Buren's nomination in 1836 
occasion had arisen for one faction or the other in each local 
pair to withdraw from the Jackson alliance. From that 
time onward there was a permanent Whig and Democratic 
following in each Southern state. These divided almost 
the whole community between them, and were quite evenly 
matched in the several states, except in Kentucky which 
was overwhelmingly Whig and in the frontier states each of 
which invariably cast its first electoral vote for the Demo- 
cratic ticket. Throughout nearly all the cotton belt Whig 
strength was concentrated in the plantation districts, while 
the mountains and the pine-barrens as well as the frontier 
were Democratic strongholds. In North Carolina, curi- 
ously, the alignment was the reverse of this, with the moun- 
taineers almost unanimously Whig and the middle country 
mainly Democratic. In Virginia and Tennessee the dis- 
tribution of Whig strength was determined partly by local 
demands for roads and canals and partly by devotion to 
state-rights principles, while everyone who had no special 
reason to join the Whigs tended to be a Democrat. In 
Kentucky Clay's personal influence was enough to main- 
tain perfect Whig ascendency. In Louisiana the sugar 
planters desiring protection and the cotton planters oppos- 
ing protection joined hands as Whigs — as order-loving 
men of property in fear of disturbance by a rabble. Through- 
out the country the alliances though often incongruous were 
firmly cemented for something more than a decade. By 
1840 the rank and file were so firmly habituated to their 
neighborhood friendships and enmities that usually the 
leaders themselves could not remodel the popular alignment. 
When Tyler and Wise, for example, went from the Whig 
into the Democratic camp in 1 841-1842, their district con- 
tinued to give Whig majorities; and when between 1847 



A SOUTHERN WHIG IN CONGRESS 29 

and 1850 Yancey, Calhoun, and Toombs and Stephens 
successively sounded the Southern community upon the 
question of combining the Southern wings of the two na- 
tional parties into a single phalanx for sectional defense, the 
popular response was decisively in favor of retaining the 
two-national-party regime. 

The bulk of the Southern people throughout this period 
tended to maintain the doctrine of state rights. This 
inclination was in part a traditional possession from the 
times of Jefferson, Madison, Randolph, Crawford, Macon, 
Roane and John Taylor of Caroline; but it had recently 
been strengthened by the strife over the Creek, Cherokee, 
and tariff issues and by the studious consideration now being 
given to the rising slavery question. Many of the Demo- 
crats were now temporarily indifferent to state rights, and 
a minority of the Southern Whigs (the sugar producers 
and the advocates of federal internal improvements) were 
friendly to the use of broad powers by the federal govern- 
ment. But the great central body of Southern Whigs, the 
cotton producers, were state-rights men pure and simple 
who joined the Whig coalition from a sense of outrage at 
Jackson's threat of coercing South Carolina. With Calhoun 
and Tyler at their head they entered into alliance with 
Webster, Clay and the National Republicans as a choice 
of evils, persuaded by Clay's partial abandonment of his 
"American System," and deeming the alliance to be proba- 
bly but a temporary recourse. Successive arbitrary deeds 
of Jackson in the middle thirties drove to the Whigs still 
other politicians and constituencies,* until by the middle 
of 1836 there was in every Southern state a strong anti- 
Van Buren organization, and in the election of that year 
the electoral vote of the South was evenly divided between 
Van Buren and the several Whig candidates. 

The Whigs when defeated in the North in that contest 
* L. G. Tyler, Letters and Times of the Tylers, I, 604. 



30 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

promptly realized that union instead of alliance was a con- 
dition of party success, and began to organize for victory 
in 1840. But some of the anti-Van Buren allies when con- 
fronted with the demand that they take party pledges, 
revised their choice of evils and marched back to the Demo- 
cratic camp. The Democratic movement had lost its 
momentum as a rise of the lower classes, and was no longer 
to be feared by conservatives; and Van Buren was obviously 
not an autocrat. Calhoun, dreading a revival of a paternal- 
istic programme by the Clay following, forsook the Whigs in 
1837-1838 and by gradual stages, carrying with him the 
majority of South Carolina voters, became fully identified 
with the Democratic party. R. M. T. Hunter, of Virginia, 
and three Georgia congressmen, Mark A. Cooper, Walter 
T. Colquitt, and Edward J. Black, followed Calhoun's 
example in 1 839-1 840. Many other Georgia Whigs doubt- 
less deliberated painfully whether they should adopt the 
same course, before the success of the "hurrah campaign" 
of 1840 gave them a taste of victory. Nearly thirty years 
afterward Stephens expressed the opinion that his entrance 
into the Whig organization had been an error.* On Toombs's 
part no such repentance is on record and probably none was 
ever expressed. His fondness for constructive and con- 
servative policies and his moderation in everything not 
concerned with probity, citizens' rights and the slavery issue 
probably caused his later judgment to approve his course 
with the lights at the time before him; and furthermore he 
was never a man for vain regrets. 

The bulk of the Georgia Whigs repudiated the course of 
Colquitt, Cooper and Black, and after a good deal of jockey- 
ing decided to stand firmly by the National Whig banner. 
On June 25, 1839, the Southern Recorder, of Milledgeville, 
a leading Whig organ of the state, announced that it would 
support for the presidency in 1840 George M. Troup, the 
* Johnston and Browne, Lije of Stephens, p. 140. 



A SOUTHERN WHIG IN CONGRESS 31 

veteran fire-eating ex-governor of Georgia, whose name was 
of course one to conjure with among state-rights devotees. 
Other Whig journals endorsed the Recorder s proposal, while 
the Democratic presses denounced it as a ruse to carry 
Georgia's vote for Clay in case the election were thrown into 
the United States House of Representatives. In reply the 
Recorder, July 30, disavowed such purpose, declared its desire 
in good faith to secure Troup's election if possible, and made 
a counter charge that the Van Buren papers were trying 
to discredit Troup's nomination because they knew that if 
the State Rights party, now commonly called Whig, should 
support Clay the state would be carried for Van Buren. 
The nomination of Harrison and Tyler in December by the 
Whig national convention at Harrisburg (in which Georgia 
was not represented) ended Clay's candidacy and relieved 
the need for an independent candidate in Georgia. Never- 
theless the Recorder continued to carry Troup's name at 
its "masthead" until the end of April, 1840, devoting 
its editorials meanwhile to the censure of both Van Buren 
and " Federalism " and incidentally scolding Cooper, 
Colquitt and Black for their failure to rally to Troup's 
standard. Cooper as the spokesman of this trio issued 
in April a letter to his constituents pointing to Calhoun's 
example in support of his policy and asserting that the 
Democrats had now repudiated the Jacksonian exaggera- 
tion of federal powers, while the Whigs were to be feared 
not only because of their nationalistic leaning but also 
because of the presence within their party of a strong aboli- 
tionist wing at the North.* 

In the same month a series of Whig meetings in the state 
showed such a strong current for Harrison and Tyler that 
on May 5 the Recorder withdrew Troup's name and joined 
the Harrison movement. In June Troup himself issued a 
public letter from his plantation retirement expressing a 
* Federal Union, April 14, 1840. 



32 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

lingering wish that state-rights men should hold aloof in 
the campaign.* But the will of the organization had by 
this time become established. At Macon, on April ii, a 
Whig massmeeting had discussed in its resolutions the 
Democratic charge that Harrison was an enemy to state 
rights and Southern interests. "Would John Tyler consent 
to be identified with such a man on the same ticket. f"' the 
resolutions enquired; and in answer asserted: "It cannot 
for one moment be believed."! On June i and 2 the "anti- 
Van Buren" or Whig convention of the state held its session 
at Milledgeville, with John M. Berrien in the chair and 
Robert Toombs a leading member on the floor, deliberated 
very briefly, endorsed Harrison and Tyler, nominated a 
ticket of electors in their behalf, and adjourned to a nearby 
grove for a barbecue and jubilation. X Contemporaneously 
a Georgia Democrat wrote to a colleague: "Two or three 
state-rights men that I know, and only two or three, will 
vote for Van Buren. It is impossible to beat it into the 
heads of the NuUifiers that Cooper, Colquitt and Black are 
not turncoats, but sustain the same principles they have 
ever done, and those they were sent there to uphold." § 
Against the Harrison-Tyler movement further opposition 
was in vain. The combination of state-rights protesta- 
tions, denunciations of Democratic irresponsibility, pleas 
for sound policy, and Tippecanoe hurrahs carried the state 
in November by a large majority; and as was usual in the 
ante-bellum period, as Georgia went so went the nation. 
Among the leading stump speakers in the state during the 
campaign was Toombs, who not only won many votes for 
Harrison in eastern Georgia but crossed the river to break 
a lance with the redoubtable McDuffie at his own home, 
and came out of the joint debate with high credit. 

* Southern Banner, June 12, 1840. 

t Southern Recorder, April 21, 1840. % Ibid., June 9, 1840. 

§ Letter of James Jackson to Howell Cobb, June 14, 1840. 



A SOUTHERN WHIG IN CONGRESS 33 

As soon as Tyler's troublous administration began, upon 
the death of Harrison, the essential antagonism between 
the Whig elements became obvious; and the Georgia Whigs 
faced afresh the question of their continuance in the coali- 
tion. Their organization was by this time compact, however, 
and they resolved with one accord to hold to the alliance. 
The cotton belt was in severe financial distress and anxious 
for peaceful politics and remedial measures. Tyler's bel- 
ligerence against Clay's policies was lamented and Clay 
was praised for constructive statesmanship and moderation. 
Though the Democratic party at large was now appealing 
for Southern support and professing friendship for Southern 
interests, the Georgia Whig leaders found no reason to 
believe that this inclination was other than opportunist 
and temporary. Toombs and Stephens and their colleagues 
realized that with the sectional issues once alive each 
country-wide party must include a Northern and a Southern 
wing, as well as a center mainly concerned with non-sectional 
matters. With faith in their own sound intentions and 
their own ability they assumed their share of the burden, on 
the one hand of keeping the whole Whig party united and 
on the other of making their party, as much as they could, 
respect and uphold the chief claims of the South. They 
were prepared, for example, to make concessions in regard 
to the tariff and a United States Bank in order to procure 
concessions in turn upon the slavery issue. Meanwhile 
Clay rendered assistance in keeping the rank and file in 
line by touring across the state in the spring of 1844, mak- 
ing a multitude of friends by his ingratiating addresses. 
At Milledgeville, for example, he warmly eulogized the 
memory of William H. Crawford and in discussing the 
presidential election of 1 824-1 825 "he explained to the sat- 
isfaction of every unprejudiced mind that it was alone on 
account of Mr. Crawford's physical debility, his absolute 
prostration upon that bed of death as it was then sup- 



34 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

posed, that he came to the determination to cast his vote for 
Mr. Adams." * 

Turn we now to affairs at Washington. Among the suc- 
cessful candidates for the Twenty-eighth Congress, elected 
in 1842 and taking their seats in December, 1843, were four 
new members of the House, all belonging to the new genera- 
tion of Southern-rights champions but each representing a 
somewhat distinct policy. William Lowndes Yancey of 
Alabama, a Democrat, uncompromisingly demanded every 
possible concession to Southern interests, and within four 
years reached the conclusion that the case for "Southern 
rights" in the Union was hopeless, retired from Congress 
and campaigned from time to time thereafter in advocacy 
of Southern independence. Howell Cobb of Georgia, a 
Democrat, likewise began by making vigorous demands for 
the promotion of Southern interests, but was willing to 
accept compromises for the sake of preserving the Union. 
Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia, a Whig, began by appeal- 
ing for moderation and mutual concessions by North and 
South, but was prepared to fall back upon extreme policies 
if conciliation should ultimately fail of its purpose. Andrew 
Johnson of Tennessee, a Democrat, was vigorous to the 
point of vehemence in supporting the claims of the South, 
but was not disposed to countenance any extreme recourse 
in case the decision of the congressional contest should be 
unfavorable. 

At the convening of the Twenty-ninth Congress in Decem- 
ber, 1845, these men were joined by Jefferson Davis of 
Mississippi, a Democrat more conciliatory than Yancey 
but less so than Cobb, and by Robert Toombs of Georgia, 
a Whig of about the same attitude as Stephens. Thus 
there were thrown together in the House in their early prime 
the whole group of Southern leaders who were destined to 
figure most actively in the great crisis of the sixties. Of 
* Georgia Journal, March 26, 1844. 



A SOUTHERN WHIG IN CONGRESS 35 

more experienced colleagues in the House when they entered 
it there were of prominent Southerners only Jacob Thomp- 
son of Mississippi, R, Barnwell Rhett of South Carolina 
and R. M. T. Hunter of Virginia, few in number and moder- 
ate in ability. Coaching on sectional questions was easily 
to be had, however, from the veterans in the Senate, Calhoun, 
Mangum, Archer, Berrien, Walker and Crittenden. As 
Northern protagonists in the House there were John Quincy 
Adams and Joshua R. Giddings, men of experience, ability 
and aggressive sectional policy, Truman Smith, Preston 
King and David Wilmot, less capable but equally aggres- 
sive, Robert C. Winthrop, positive though willing to con- 
ciliate, and the new-coming Stephen A. Douglas of untried 
mettle. The House was accordingly at this time a particu- 
larly good training ground for new Southern partisans. 

In the Twenty-eighth Congress the House had rescinded 
its famous twenty-first rule, the "gag law" which, during 
its eight years of enforcement, had enabled the anti-slavery 
agitators to gain enormous advantage by connecting their 
propaganda with the "sacred right of petition." As soon 
as the gag was removed popular interest in the right of 
petition promptly died; but the momentum of the agitators 
was at once diverted toward the restriction of slaveholding 
territory, and here the issue of Texan annexation and those 
resulting from the Mexican war gave them large opportunity. 

Toombs began his service in the House in the midst of 
the lull which fell between the Annexation struggle and the 
Proviso strife; and he used this opportunity to show his 
inclination toward national in preference to sectional interests. 
Throughout his first year in Congress he pursued uniformly, 
and in spite of provocations in the latter portion which must 
have tried his patience, a course calculated to conciliate 
the sections and to maintain the Whig party as a Union- 
strengthening organization. In this first year, and in the 
second also, he devoted himself in fact mainly to listening, 



36 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

and seldom took part in the proceedings except by his votes 
and a few studiously prepared set speeches. 

His maiden speech in the House was delivered January 
12, 1846, on Oregon. In this he prefaced his remarks by 
saying that he had listened attentively to get knowledge 
of the question from all sources. Then going straight to 
the heart of the issue, he said there were but two questions 
to be discussed: i. What are our rights to Oregon; 2. Is 
it now expedient to begin to assert them by terminating the 
convention of 181 8. All other questions, he said, were but 
incidental, and members were not warranted in exaggerat- 
ing their importance; all speakers opposed to the proposal, 
and the press as well, had brought in the question of peace 
or war; this was adroit. He would go far, he said, as far 
as any man, to maintain peace provided it were an honor- 
able peace; but no clamors within or without the hall would 
influence his decision. Time had been when inactivity was 
masterly; that time was past. Viewing the problem as a 
national, not a sectional one, he believed the United States 
ought to end the joint occupancy. As to boundaries, he 
was not sure our title was unexceptionable as far as 54° 40', 
for our title acquired from Spain was but inchoate. But 
our title south of the Columbia river and including its 
drainage basin was undoubtedly good; and he endorsed 
the President's proposal of adjustment on the basis of the 
forty-ninth parallel. As to the time for giving notice, he 
saw no present emergency and he favored the authorizing 
of the President to give notice at discretion. He expressed 
surprise that the advocates of notice should object to placing 
it in the President's hands, since he was constitutionally 
charged with the conduct of foreign relations and was from 
his own position the best judge of when and how notice 
should be given. It should be given soon for the sake of 
defining boundaries and for the sake of giving our settlers 
the protection of our law. To delay notice, with settlers 



A SOUTHERN WHIG IN CONGRESS 37 

pouring over the mountains, would be to secure us no rights 
but to multiply our difficulties. In conclusion, returning 
to the topic of war, "he viewed it as the greatest and most 
horrible calamity. Even a war for liberty itself was rarely 
compensated by the consequences. Yet the common judg- 
ment of mankind consigned to infamy the people who would 
surrender their rights and freedom for the sake of dishonor- 
able peace. In this matter, however, the question of peace 
or war did not weigh a feather; it had nothing to do with it."* 
As a private commentary on this speech Toombs wrote to his 
friend George W. Crawford, governor of Georgia, February 6: 

" I do not think a war in the least probable. Mr. Polk 
never dreamed of any other war than a war upon the Whigs. 
. . . The Democratic party had declared our title to 'all Ore- 
gon' * clear and unquestionable.' Mr. Polk adopted and 
asserted the same thing in his inaugural speech. . . . His party 
were already committed to him to 54° 40', they would stand 
by him, and he expected finally to be forced by the British 
Whigs and Southern Calhoun men to compromise; but he 
greatly hoped that he would not be forced even to this alter- 
native until he had 'all Oregon' on every Democratic ban- 
ner in the Union for his 'second heat'. . . . Hence I urged 
the Whigs to stand up and give him the power to give the 
notice whenever he thought proper, which would have 
' blocked ' him. But they would save themselves and their 
party for the same reason that the lad did in scripture 'be- 
cause' their friends 'had much goods.' Wall street howled, 
old Gales was frightened into fits at the possibility of war, 
and the Whig press throughout the country screamed in 
piteous accents peace, peace, with the vain foolish hope of 
gaining popular confidence by their very fears, and like the 
magnetic needle they expected to tremble into peace. Noth- 
ing could be more absurd. If we have peace they are dis- 
armed, and whatever may be the terms of accommodation 
they will be estopped from uttering a word of complaint. 
If war comes, no people were ever foolish enough to trust its 
conduct to a 'peace party' for very good sufficient reasons. 
If the country should be beaten and dishonored, they will 

* Congressional Globe, 29th. Cong., ist sess., pp. 185, 186. 



38 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

be called upon to patch up a dishonorable peace, but in no 
other event. There is another view of this question, purely 
sectional, which our people don't seem to understand. Some 
of our Southern papers seem to think we are very foolish 
to risk a war to secure anti-slave power. They look only 
at the surface of things. If we had control of the govern- 
ment and could control this question, I have not the least 
doubt that Calhoun is right in saying that his 'masterly 
inactivity' policy is the only one which ever could acquire 
'all Oregon.' It can never be done in any other way except 
to give the notice and stand still, which would effect the 
same object rightfully; but notice and action never will 
acquire all Oregon. Mark the prediction. Notice will force 
an early settlement. That settlement will be upon or near the 
basis of 49°, and therefore a loss of half the country. Now 
one of the strongest private reasons which governs me is that 
I don't [care] a fig about any of Oregon and would gladly get 
ridd of the controversy by giving it all to anybody else than 
the British if I could with honor. The country is too large 
now, and I don't want a foot of Oregon or an acre of any other 
country, especially without 'niggers.' These are some of my 
reasons for my course which don't appear in print." 

Toombs's second speech in the House, delivered July i, 
1846, was on the tariff. He contended that the pending bill 
supported by the Democratic majority was an injudicious 
combination of protectionist and free-trade items and would 
unwisely curtail the revenue and hinder the government 
in financing the large expenditures already authorized by 
the party in power. He spoke of the existing tariff as being 
as good as could have been expected in view of the turmoil 
prevailing at the time of its enactment in 1842 and as being 
based, as he thought all tariffs ought to be, on the considera- 
tion of revenue primarily but with reasonable discrimina- 
tions for the protection of home industries. He reviewed 
the general doctrine of free trade disapprovingly, and ex- 
pressed preference incidentally for specific as against ad 
valorem duties.* The speech, confined as it was to generali- 

* Congressional Globe Appendix, 29th. Cong., ist sess., pp. 1030, 1035. 



A SOUTHERN WHIG IN CONGRESS 39 

ties and to destructive criticism, shows distinct restraint on 
Toombs's part and a leading purpose of promoting solidar- 
ity in the Whig party. That he was by no means a stand- 
pat protectionist is shown in a letter which he wrote to 
Stephens, January 24, 1845: "The most foolish thing Mr. 
Clay did during the campaign was to write that foolish letter 
to Pennsylvania pleading his opposition to any modification 
of the tariff of 1842. It is a good law, but it is not perfect; 
nor did human ingenuity ever make a perfect revenue law. 
It never will." 

Toombs's next public expression was an impromptu speech 
upon Mexican relations. He had doubted the constitu- 
tionality of Texan annexation and dreaded the prospect of 
sectional wrangling which he foresaw would ensue. After 
studying the question in the winter of 1 844-1 845 while 
invalided with rheumatism, he wrote to Stephens, February 
16, in reference to a speech which Stephens had delivered on 
January 25: "Your speech is a good one, tho' I have rarely 
found myself differing with you on so many points. I 
concur with you in but one of your reasons for desiring annex- 
ation, and that is that it will give power to the slave states. 
I firmly believe that in every other respect it will be an 
unmixed evil to us." During 1845 Texas was formally 
annexed; and in 1846 war with Mexico ensued. In re- 
sponse to President Polk's request for military appropria- 
tions a bill of supply was introduced and supported by the 
Democrats, with a preamble asserting that the war had been 
begun by Mexico. In July Toombs spoke denouncing the 
preamble as an assertion of what no man could rise in his 
place and say he knew was true; and incidentally he cen- 
sured John H. Lumpkin, a Democrat from Georgia, for 
declaring that opposition to the preamble was unpatriotic. 
The true question, Toombs said, was not the appropriation 
but the defense of the President's policy. He himself, 
Toombs continued, had opposed the annexation of Texas 



40 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

as long as opposition was availing; now since it had legally 
become part of the United States he was ready to defend 
it; the question was merely where lay its boundary; the 
joint resolution had provided that "so much of the territory 
as rightfully belongs to Texas shall be annexed to the United 
States"; the President had cut this Gordian knot and 
Congress was called upon to sanction the act. "No man 
could tell where the boundary was; it might be fixed by 
treaty or by the sword. If by the latter, it should right- 
fully be done by this House. But the President, usurping 
the power of the House, had assumed to do it, and this 
House were to be compelled to support him or to be de- 
nounced as wanting patriotism. He did not believe the 
allegation of the preamble; he would not vote for it; he 
took the responsibility; and if his reputation was not suf- 
ficient to maintain itself against those who chose to attack 
it on this ground, it was not worth defense." He concluded 
by saying that the Whigs were as ready as any others to 
vote all necessary supplies and take all necessary measures 
to defend the country.* 

On August 8, after the initial victories had been won by 
the American forces in Mexico, Polk in a special message 
asked for an appropriation for use in negotiating peace. 
Mr. McKay, a Democrat from North Carolina, at once 
introduced a bill to appropriate two million dollars for 
defraying any extraordinary expenses which might be incurred 
in the intercourse of the United States with foreign nations, 
and he also moved that all debate in the committee of the 
whole should cease at two o'clock, an hour already close at 
hand; and on this he called for the previous question. The 
Whigs were at once up in arms. Winthrop moved to table 
the resolution and asked for the yeas and nays. The tabling 
resolution was lost by 68 to 85, and the seconding of the 
previous question carried by 82 to 68. By this time it was 
* Congressional Globe, 29th. Cong., ist. sess., pp. 837, 838. 



A SOUTHERN WHIG IN CONGRESS 41 

already after two o'clock. Wrangling now arose over the 
question whether it was in order to resolve to close debate 
at an hour already past. Toombs and Howell Cobb fell 
into an altercation, and such hubbub arose in the House 
that the reporter could hear nothing but a proclamation 
from Toombs: "So far as I am concerned, I intend to know 
something about the matter before I vote for this bill." 
As soon as order was restored the House defeated McKay's 
two-o'clock resolution and provided instead for two hours 
of debate in committee.* The episode indicated Toombs's 
talent for riding out a parliamentary storm; but no similar 
occasion arose during that Congress. 

In the following winter Toombs made only a single speech; 
but the tenor of that showed that the provocation of the 
Wilmot Proviso was breaking down his resolution to refrain 
from sectional courses. The occasion for the speech, Janu- 
ary 8, 1847, was the "ten-regiment bill" for garrisoning the 
conquests of New Mexico and California. In opposing the 
measure he reviewed the whole conduct of the war and 
the problem of slavery in the territories which had been 
precipitated by the introduction of Wilmot's famous amend- 
ment on the stormy eighth of August preceding. He reiter- 
ated his disapproval of the policy which had led to the war, 
and censured the President's flagrant failure to support 
Whig generals in the field and his attempt at stifling criti- 
cism by impugning the patriotism of his critics. Toombs 
appealed earnestly to his fellow Whigs to "expose all manner 
of official delinquency and corruption, suff'er no detriment to 
come upon any of the securities of popular liberty and repub- 
lican government amid the danger of arms, keep the country 
always in the right if possible, but protect her in any and 
every event from the foreign enemy." Noting the Presi- 
dent's statement that a tender of peace had been made to 
Mexico, Toombs expressed doubt that it was a proper offer. 
* Congressional Globe, 29th. Cong., ist. sess., pp. 1212-1213. 



42 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

He urged the offering of an honorable peace, compelling 
Mexico to pay all debts but taking none of her territory. 
Even should an indemnity be demanded of her, which he 
deprecated, he thought it should be required in money, with 
her ports seized and revenues collected for the purpose if 
necessary, but not an indemnity in land in any event what- 
ever. The Mexicans though not brave, he said, were 
obstinate and would stand a great deal of beating. If they 
should refuse a treaty we must send fifty or a hundred 
thousand more men and coerce them into a treaty; but in 
any case it would be contrary to the spirit and purpose of our 
government to conquer a people and bring them under our 
jurisdiction. 

Thus far the speech was the moderate though positive 
utterance of a national Whig, and thus far it had probably 
been carefully prepared. But before taking his seat Toombs 
added an impromptu appendix to pay his respects to the 
Wilmot policy which had been brought forward again by Mr. 
Grover in a proposed amendment to the ten-regiment bill. 
In adding this appendix Toombs changed his role for the 
time being from Whig to Southerner, from critic to parti- 
san, from moderate to belligerent. He said in part: 

"The gentleman from New York [Mr. Grover] asked how 
the South could complain of the proposed proviso to accom- 
pany the admission of new territory, when the arrangement 
was so perfectly fair, and put the North and South upon a 
footing of perfect equality. The North could go there 
without slaves, and so could the South. Well, Mr. T. would 
try the principle the other way. Suppose the territory to 
be open to all: then the South could go there and carry 
slaves with them, and so could the North. Would not 
this be just as equal? [Much laughter.] Mr. T. said he would 
not answer for the strength of the argument; but it was as 
good as what he got. [Laughter.] The South would remain 
in the Union on a ground of perfect equality with the rest 
of the Union, or they would not stay at all. They asked 
for honest and honorable Union; more they did not ask nor 



A SOUTHERN WHIG IN CONGRESS 43 

would they put up with less. To ask them to be content 
with a position of inferiority would degrade those who made 
such a proposition as much as it would those who could 
accept of it. . . . The South claimed to stand on an equal 
platform with the other states. This they demanded as their 
right, and they intended to have it." * 

The conflict of functions indicated in this speech gives 
the key to Toombs's whole congressional career and to the 
tragedy of its failure. He was the painstaking and scrupu- 
lous guardian of the whole country's honor and welfare 
without regard to section, and for the sake of promoting 
national harmony he was a loyal Whig; but whenever 
others less national-minded than he precipitated angry 
sectional issues he was driven by both reason and impulse 
to uphold with might and main what he considered the essen- 
tial rights of the Southern people. 

The appreciation with which Toombs's talents and policies 
had now come to be viewed by the public is indicated in a 
letter of Alexander H. Stephens to his brother Linton, 
January 13, 1847, referring to the speech of January 8, above 
summarized: 

"It was decidedly one of the best speeches I ever heard 
Toombs make, and I have heard him make some fine dis- 
pliys. It was even superior to his Oregon speech. He 
had fully prepared himself, was calm and slow, much more 
systematic than usual, and in many points was truly elo- 
quent. The House was full and the galleries crowded, and 
all ears were open and all eyes upon him. He commanded 
their entire and close attention from the beginning to the 
end, and the effort has added full fifteen cubits to his stature 
as a statesman and a man of talents in the opinion of the 
House and the great men of the nation. I was better pleased 
with it than with any speech I have heard this session. . . . 
He is destined to take a very high position here." f 

* Congressional Globe, 29th. Cong., 2nd. sess., pp. 140-142. 
t Johnston and Browne, Life of Stephens, p. 218. 



44 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS • 

The ensuing recess of Congress Toombs employed as 
usual in riding the circuit in Georgia, attending to the busi- 
ness of his heavy legal practise and discussing crops and 
politics with his fellow-citizens. Fond always of human 
intercourse and proud of his own fluent incisiveness, he would 
discuss affairs with any intelligent person available. He 
was willing to listen but when listening was prone to inter- 
rupt with comments of his own, usually humorous and 
always telling. His favorite form of discussion, however, 
was a monologue delivered by himself primarily to two or 
three Whigs or Democrats who had engaged him in con- 
versation and secondarily to a circle of listeners gathered 
about that nucleus and eagerly crowding in to catch his 
words. Toombs, half-spoiled pet as he was, rarely failed 
to sparkle in response to such challenges of popular admi- 
ration. It was these little occasions, occurring in his career 
hundreds upon hundreds of times in court-house yards, 
taverns and railroad coaches that fostered in Toombs the 
habit of over-prompt and over-strong statement which at 
times marred his utterances in Congress. It was these 
occasions also which constituted his principal means of 
keeping in touch with public opinion. Cobb and Stephens, 
especially the former, maintained voluminous correspond- 
ence with personal friends throughout the state, and thus 
kept fingers constantly upon the public pulse. Toombs 
was too superbly self-trustful to do this; but devoted him- 
self to the study of public documents with an assiduity 
which was the despair of his colleagues. In a discussion 
in the House, March i6, 1848, for instance, on a bill for 
revising the system of handling the revenue, a member had 
spoken of the difficulty of learning the state of the finances 
from the intricate report of the Secretary of the Treasury. 
Toombs replied regarding this complaint and the bill itself: 
"Much of the difficulty arises from the inattention of gentle- 
men and in consequence of their not taking the trouble to 



A SOUTHERN WHIG IN CONGRESS 45 

ascertain the facts in connection with the revenue of the 
country. The question should be examined and reported 
upon by a committee. It was too large a question to be 
decided upon by the House without such preparatory 
examination." Mr. Hudson of Massachusetts who followed 
Toombs "concurred in many of the remarks which had fallen 
from the member of the Committee of Ways and Means 
[Mr. Toombs]. . . . Now he [Mr. H.] admitted that gentle- 
man's industry and great power of endurance, but he con- 
fessed that for himself the task was not so easy; and the 
gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. McKay], familiar as 
he had long been with the subject, had likewise confessed 
how difficult he foujid it fully to understand all the Secre- 
tary's report." 

In his third year in Congress, Toombs, ripened by his 
study of affairs and with influence assured by the recog- 
nition of constituents and colleagues, subordinated both 
sectional and party interests throughout the long session 
to a non-partisan advocacy of sound policy, mainly in regard 
to finance. Early in the session, it is true, he introduced a 
Whig resolution on the war, without debating it: "Resolved, 
That neither the honor nor the interest of this Republic 
demands the dismemberment of Mexico or the annexation 
of any portion of her territory to the United States as an 
indispensable condition to the restoration of peace," * and 
a few weeks before adjournment he made a Whig speech 
on the presidential campaign then in progress; but his prin- 
cipal work in the House was as an advocate of frugality, 
moderation and propriety. On March 17, for instance, he 
opposed a bill for printing 90,000 copies of the patent-office 
report, saying that regardless of the question of its value 
for the farmers the government ought not to publish such 
material: "It was a violation of sound principle and a 
betrayal of their public trust. They were not authorized 

* Congressional Globe, 30th. Cong., ist. sess., p. 61 (Dec. 21, 1847). 



4.6 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

to put their hands in the public treasury and seize the money 
for applying it to objects that came not legitimately within 
their powers and duties." * On August 4 he opposed the 
maintenance of a large army, saying that Mr. Gentry had 
just "talked of needing fifteen regiments to keep New 
Mexico and California quiet when we had just conquered 
them with three." Five thousand men he thought would 
be adequate for every purpose as a peace establishment. 
The Adjutant-General had estimated for eleven thousand, 
but "military officers were always extravagant in their 
notions and their requisitions." On August 11 he reen- 
tered the debate. "He argued that a less number of men 
was needed, since the power of concentrating them on any 
desired point had been so greatly increased. Orders were 
now communicated by lightning and the men brought to- 
gether by steam. He dwelt on the cost of this government 
in a time of peace, which he estimated at thirty millions, — 
more than any government on earth was worth. Extravagant 
public expenditure was the road to ruin on which many gov- 
ernments of the Old World had travelled to their destruc- 
tion. . . . Mr. T.," continues the reporter in his medley of 
indirect quotation and summary, "dwelt on the evils of 
executive patronage, and contended that it ought to be cut 
down, and as one means of doing this he was for reducing 
the size of the army. ... He insisted that our frontier had 
not been much increased. He denied that any numerous force 
was needed to garrison the posts at home or take care of the 
public property there; and then he advanced his ultra ground, 
as on a former occasion, that we needed no army, not a man. 
The people were all-sufficient for the defence of the country. 
He was willing to keep up a strong navy, but he believed 
an army wholly unnecessary." Again on August 12, com- 
menting upon the report of the committee of conference 
upon the civil and diplomatic appropriation bill, he "charged 
* Congressional Globe, 30th. Cong., ist. sess., pp. 481, 482. 



A SOUTHERN WHIG IN CONGRESS 47 

them with having capitulated to the Senate at every point. 
He spoke of the question of members' mileage, and the reduc- 
tion of the salaries of officers in the executive departments 
and some others, and he said he trusted there would be a 
burst of indignation from the country on account of this 
yielding of salutary measures of reform." * 

His views upon proprieties in congressional relations and 
procedure were expressed in equally positive manner. In 
April rumors were mentioned in the House of threatened 
mob violence toward certain abolitionist congressmen as 
punishment for incendiary utterances made by them in 
debate, and a suggestion was made that congressional 
privilege should be enlarged so as to safeguard members 
against popular tumults. Toombs opposed this, maintain- 
ing that the ordinary immunities of citizens were adequate 
for the purpose, and deprecating any adoption of "the 
libertine construction of privilege which for so many cen- 
turies oppressed the people of Great Britain." As regards 
proprieties in debate, — on August 5, when Mr. Thompson 
of Indiana inquired of Mr. McClelland of Michigan whether 
an amendment proposed by the latter to the river and harbor 
bill would not if adopted cause the bill to be vetoed, Toombs 
"with much warmth called Mr. Thompson to order for his 
reference to the probable action of the executive. It was 
unparhamentary and highly improper. He hoped never 
to hear any reference made in that Hall of Representatives 
to the opinions of the President or to any action of his bearing 
on the legislation of that House." f While occasionally 
brusque in speech and impatient of peccadilloes, Toombs 
was careful to preserve the dignity of the House and earnest 
in maintaining the established rules in all ordinary affairs. 
He said very truly some years later: "I follow regular order 
as long as it will meet justice; but when it does not I go 

* Congressional Globe, 30th. Cong., ist. sess., pp. 1037, 1063, 1070. 
t Ibid., pp. 65s, 1042. 



48 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

outside it with great facility"; and this applied to general 
policy as well as to House routine. 

In the course of the year 1848 Toombs was forced to 
realize that it was becoming increasingly difficult to continue 
as a Southern champion and at the same time a Whig in 
regular standing. In the hope of preventing the impending 
sectional splitting of the party he labored in the spring for 
Taylor's nomination as an uncommitted patriot; in the 
summer he made a speech in the House censuring Cass and 
the Democratic platform, praising Taylor, and appealing 
for constitutional observance in territorial policy; * in the 
fall he canvassed and carried Georgia for the Taylor ticket; 
and in the winter he strove to induce Congress to settle the 
Proviso issue before Polk's term should expire. His purpose 
here was to clear the way for Whig harmony under Taylor; 
but Congress, obdurate in its disagreements, left the fateful 
issue still alive. Finally in the following summer and fall 
he became first apprehensive, and then convinced, that 
Taylor was a supporter of the Wilmot policy. Baffled in 
his labors for peace, Toombs was thus driven when the new 
Congress met in December, 1849, to relinquish his Whig 
regularity, at least for a period, and concentrate all his 
efforts upon the safeguarding of Southern rights. 

* Congressional Globe Appendix, 30th. Cong., ist. sess., pp. 841-846. 
Speech of Toombs, July i, 1848. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE PROVISO CRISIS AND THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 

IT is often said that the United States constitution estab- 
lished a government of the people, by the people, and 
for the people; but in the light of experience it may more 
truly be said to have provided the machinery for a govern- 
ment of the people, by the political majority, in behalf of 
the interests which control that majority. As soon as the 
divergence of sectional interests and clash of policies be- 
came patent, the politicians and the people saw that the crux 
of their political strategy lay in controlling the majority 
in Congress. The South and the North were assigned in 
the beginning an equal representation in the Senate, but 
the North was given a preponderance in the House. As the 
decades passed and the tide of European immigration poured 
into the regions of wage-earning industry, the North steadily 
increased its House majority and the slave-employing South 
was barely able to maintain its equality in the Senate. 
There was no danger of the South overriding the North by 
congressional measures, for it was impossible for the minor- 
ity to enact legislation against the will of the majority; 
but there was a lively prospect of the North becoming 
able and quite possibly willing to inflict its preferences upon 
the dissenting South. Among the Southern politicians and 
people it became a pressing and later a desperate problem to 
find means to maintain or restore the sectional balance and 
safeguard their interests against threatened and perhaps 
irremediable disturbance. Senatorial representation accord- 
ingly became a vital issue between the sections. All matters 



50 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

of social and industrial adjustment concerning the negroes 
in the South, such as fugitive-slave rendition, the circulation 
of incendiary propaganda through the mail, the control of 
the interstate slave trade and the slave trade and slavery in 
the District of Columbia, and in final analysis the abolition 
of slavery itself, the enfranchisement of the negroes and the 
spoliation of the Southern community, all depended for 
determination upon the sectional control of the Senate. The 
issue of slavery extension into the territories obtained its 
crucial importance because upon it depended the main- 
taining or upsetting of the senatorial balance. All this was 
plainly seen by clear-sighted Southerners in the forties, and 
the prospect was convincingly set forth both in pamphlet 
literature * and in the prophetic memorial drawn up by 
Calhoun and issued over the signatures of a large number of 
Southern Senators and Congressmen in 1849.! It is true 
that nearly all of the anti-slavery men in Congress in this 
period denied that their purpose went further than the 
suppression of the interstate slave trade and of slavery in 
the District and the exclusion of it from the territories. 
The Southerners, however, had no sufficient reason for 
taking these protestations at their face value or for believ- 
ing that even if the disavowals were true the same men and 
their successors would not advance to more radical, root- 
and-branch policies after they had won these preliminary 
battles. That the constitutional scruples of the ardent Free- 
soilers were weak and those of the abolitionists were nil 
the Southerners well knew. It was not until 1855 that 
Tappan, Goodell, Gerritt Smith, Frederick Douglass and 
their colleagues in their Syracuse Convention adopted a 
platform for the Liberty party proclaiming "the right and 
duty to wield the political power of the nation for the 

* See the writer's essay "The Economic and Pohtical Essays of the 
Ante-bellum South," in The South in the Building of the Nation, Richmond, 
Va., 1909, VII, 196-198. t Calhoun's Works, VI, 310, 311. 



THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 51 

overthrow of every part and parcel of American slavery." 
But the trend in this direction was already palpable ten 
years earlier; and the Southern leaders would have had no 
occasion for surprise had a large and influential convention 
met during the forties and declared as did the one in 1855: 
"We believe slaveholding to be an unsurpassed crime, and 
we hold it to be the sacred duty of civil government to 
suppress crime. . . . We consent to no dissolution [of the 
Union] which would leave the slave in his chains. . . . The 
ground which we occupy is to us holy ground; the ground of 
the true and of the right, . . . marked out by the divine 
law of loving our neighbors as ourselves. . . . We call on 
all the friends of pure religion and of our common country 
to come to the rescue and to cast in their lot with us in this 
great struggle. . . . We are resolved to go forward." Nor 
would it have been surprising if such a convention in the 
forties had advanced the constitutional doctrines which this 
one did: that slavery is an attainder because it imposes 
disabilities upon the child on account of the condition of 
the parent; that the federal constitution forbids bills of 
attainder; therefore the maintenance of slavery is uncon- 
stitutional; — and again, that Congress is fully empowered 
to abolish slavery in the states by virtue of the general 
welfare clause in the Constitution,* 

It was against the rise to power by a party with policies 
like these that Toombs and his colleagues had to contend. 
The alternative policies available for their purpose were: ; 

I. They might concede that the racial adjustments in 
the slaveholding states needed drastic change, and bespeak 
advice and assistance from the North in its accomplishment. 
This policy was generally considered inexpedient in view of 
abolitionist and anti-slavery intolerance. The Liberator as 

* Proceedings of the Convention of the Radical Political Abolitionists held 
at Syracuse, N. Y., June 26th, 27th and 28th, 185$. (Copy in the library of 
the Wisconsin Historical Society.) The italics are those of the original. 



52 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

early as its issue of December 31, 1831, for instance, had 
approvingly reprinted from the writings of the Rev. George 
Bourne: "The system is so entirely corrupt that it admits 
of no cure but by a total and immediate abolition. For a 
gradual emancipation is a virtual admission of the right, and 
establishes the rectitude of the practice. If it be just for 
one moment it is hallowed forever; and if it be inequitable 
not a day should it be tolerated." For the Southern com- 
munity to have conceded that its regime needed extensive 
remodeling would have been to give its radical enemies a 
leverage which its leaders thought could be ill afforded. It 
was hard to find a middle ground here. Toombs went as 
far as any of the Southern-rights group in conceding the 
imperfections in the Southern regime, but he was far from 
welcoming proposals for upheaval. 

2. They might plead for national harmony and the right 
of local self-government and hinder the rise of such issues as 
should seem likely to foster sectional antagonisms. In this 
regard Toombs opposed Texan annexation, which Calhoun, 
Stephens and Cobb supported, and opposed the Mexican War 
and the acquisition of New Mexico and California, which Cal- 
houn and Stephens likewise opposed, but which Cobb and 
the great bulk of the Southern Democrats endorsed. 

3. They might instead of the policy of avoidance adopt 
a resolution not only to repel the attacks upon the out- 
works of the Southern position but to throw its assailants 
upon the defensive by counter attacks. The followers of 
this programme denounced the Punic faith of the North 
in repudiating its obligations to render fugitive slaves while 
clutching fast all those advantages in the constitutional 
bargain which had been granted by the South as reciprocal 
considerations. Another feature of the programme was that 
of replying to the Wilmot Proviso by demanding as a con- 
stitutional right the opening of all the common territories 
on equal terms to slaveholding and non-slaveholding settlers. 



THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 53 

4. They might despair of safeguarding Southern interests 
within the Union and adopt the poKcy of estabhshing a 
separate Southern nationaUty. The advocates of this 
urged that the "issue be courted" and the cHmax be speeded; 
for they were aware that the lapse of years would diminish 
the relative strength of the South and lessen her chances 
of success in case a war should prove necessary in the vin- 
dication of her independence. Rhett and Seabrook of South 
Carolina, Yancey of Alabama, and Quitman of Mississippi 
were the leading advocates of this policy in the period about 
1850; but Georgians were not lacking in its support, Henry 
L. Benning, for instance, wrote to his friend Howell Cobb, 
July I, 1849: 

" It is apparent, horribly apparent that the slavery ques- 
tion rides insolently over every other everywhere. ... It 
is not less manifest that the whole North is becoming ultra 
anti-slavery and the whole South ultra pro-slavery. . . . 
It can be but a little time . . . before, owing to the causes 
now at work, the North and the South must stand face to 
face in hostile attitude. What I would have you consider 
is this: is it not better voluntarily to take at once a position, 
however extreme, which you know you must and will some- 
time take, than to take it by degrees and as it were by com- 
pulsion.'' ... I think . . . that the only safety of the 
South from abolition universal is to be found in an early 
dissolution of the Union. I think that the Union by its 
natural and ordinary working is giving anti-slavery-ism such 
a preponderance in the Genl. Government, both by adding 
to the number of free states and diminishing the number 
of slave, that it (anti-slavery-ism) will be able soon to abolish 
slavery by act of Congress and then to execute the law. I 
no more doubt that the North will abolish slavery the very 
first moment it feels itself able to do so without too much 
cost, than I doubt my existence." 

As to the first of the four policies above listed, that of 
submission to radical proposals for social and industrial 
revolution, advocacy of it was not tolerated in the Southern 
community. Witness the thorough repudiation of Birney 



54 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

in the thirties and of Helper in the fifties. Toombs appears 
never to have contemplated such a programme except with 
scorn. The second policy, that of avoiding sectional friction 
and maintaining an attitude of conciliation with an under- 
tone of firmness, was followed by Toombs in Congress until 
well into the Proviso struggle. He adopted the third policy 
described, that of aggressive defense, in 1849 after his con- 
ciliatory efforts had been foiled; and from that time for- 
ward he held in favor the fourth policy, secession, as an 
ultimate recourse in case he should become convinced that 
all other means of preventing Southern oppression would 
prove of no avail. The ebb and flow of sectional strife 
between 1849 and 1861 caused Toombs as well as many of 
his colleagues to oscillate between the two policies of strug- 
gling on in spite of odds within the Union and of cutting 
the Gordian knot by a stroke for Southern independence: 
Yancey, Rhett and Quitman were consistent advocates of 
the latter policy, and Clay, Crittenden, Benton, Brownlow 
and Botts of the former; but Calhoun, Toombs, Stephens, 
Cobb, Clingman, Holden, Hunter, Foote, Davis, Soule 
and most other Southern leaders found it very hard to reach 
a positive choice. Several of them in fact made more than 
one shift of position, their inclination toward Southern 
independence waxing with the waxing of Southern dangers 
and waning with the returning prospect of inter-sectional 
peace. 

As an aggressive defender of the South Toombs never had 
much to say directly about the slave trade in the District 
of Columbia nor about the rendition of fugitive slaves. To 
him these appear to have been uncongenial subjects. But 
in the chief outwork of the pro-slavery citadel, that of South- 
em rights in the territories, he was Calhoun's successor as 
the captain of the garrison. Even here, however, he strove 
for what he, like Calhoun and Webster, was conscious would 
be but a tactical victory. He realized that the region of 



THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 55 

New Mexico and Utah was entirely unfit for plantation 
industry and that slaveholders would never migrate thither 
in appreciable numbers. He openly conceded this, thereby 
laying himself open to criticism by Southern politicians and 
editors less frank than himself.* Nevertheless he fought 
the Wilmot policy with might and main, believing that its 
triumph would so stimulate the Northern radicals as to 
make the situation of the South in the Union unbearable. 

The famous Wilmot Proviso to prohibit slavery in the 
territory recently acquired from Mexico was introduced for 
the first time, as we have seen, on August 8,^1846. It was 
quickly passed by the House in spite of the nearly solid vote 
of the Southern members against it; but in the Senate it 
did not reach a vote before the adjournment of the session. 
On February i, 1847, Mr. Wilmot moved again to attach 
his Proviso to the same bill, now pending afresh, to appro- 
priate three million dollars for use in negotiations for peace 
with Mexico. On February 15 it passed the House with a 
smaller majority than before, overriding the now solid 
Southern opposition; but in the Senate the bill was stripped 
of the amendment and returned to the House, where the 
elimination of the Proviso was concurred in and the appro- 
priation bill passed. The issue was renewed however in 
another form next year, and the "Proviso question" was 
kept active until the late summer of 1850. On January 
10, 1848, Mr. Douglas presented in the Senate a bill for the 
territorial organization of Oregon on the basis of popular 
control of territorial institutions; but on May 21 Mr. Hale 
of New Hampshire moved to amend the bill by a provision 
excluding slavery. This precipitated a hot debate in which 
Calhoun and Jefferson Davis took the ground previously 
held by Rhett, that neither Congress nor the inhabitants 
of a territory had constitutional power to exclude slavery 
from a territory; and on June 23 Davis offered a substitute 
* E.g. New Orleans Bee, Dec. 16, 1848. 



S6 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

amendment providing that nothing in the bill should be 
construed as authorizing the prohibition of slavery in Oregon 
so long as it should continue under territorial government. 
This crystallized the issue as between the Provisoists and 
the Southern aggressive defenders. Toombs, as we have 
seen in the preceding chapter, was still trying unavailingly 
to keep the issue from becoming critical. The problem of 
New Mexico and California was now added to that of Oregon 
by a presidential message urging their speedy organization 
as territories; and on July 12 the question of the three 
territories together was referred by the Senate at the instance 
of Mr. Clayton of Delaware to a select committee with 
Clayton as chairman. On July 18 Clayton reported from 
this committee a bill embodying what promptly leaped 
into discussion as the Clayton Compromise. This provided 
for the organization of all three of these as territories, slavery 
to be prohibited in Oregon and the question in New Mexico 
and California to be left for decision by the courts. If, 
when a test case were presented, the courts of the United 
States should hold that the institution of negro slavery was 
a portion of the public law of the United States extended 
over the region by the fact of conquest, slavery would thereby 
be officially recognized and must be protected. If however 
the court decision should be that the relation of master and 
slave was a matter of private rather than public law, then 
the Mexican prohibition of slavery, in the absence of con- 
gressional legislation to the contrary, must be maintained 
as part of the private law of the region undisturbed by the 
conquest. 

The Southern people generally welcomed the Clayton 
proposal as a compromise, and they rejoiced when it passed 
the Senate on July 26. In the House, Stephens almost 
alone of the Southern members opposed it and by aiding its 
Northern opponents procured its defeat on the following 
day, though the bill for the organization of Oregon without 



THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 57 

slavery was soon afterward enacted. In explanation of 
this course he afterward wrote that he believed the Clayton 
bill to be even worse than the Wilmot Proviso, in that the 
latter might be declared unconstitutional whereas the 
former would invite the courts to exclude slavery beyond 
the power of revocation so long as the territorial regime 
should continue.* Toombs on the other hand voted for 
Clayton's plan with a view to patching up the issue. Never- 
theless he wrote to Andrew J. Miller on August 25, shortly 
after the adjournment of Congress: "Where our rights are 
clear our securities for them should be free from ambiguity. 
We ought never to surrender the territory either directly 
or covertly until it shall be wrested from us as we wrested 
it from the Mexicans. Such a surrender would degrade 
and demoralize our section and disable us from effective 
resistance to future aggression. It is far better that the 
new acquisition should be the grave of the Republic than 
of the rights and honor of the South; and from the present 
indications *to this complexion must it come at last.'" f 
Although his letter seems not to have been printed at the 
time, it was quite possibly written for circulation in Georgia 
with a view of showing that no breach had occurred between 
Toombs and Stephens and that the Southern Whig Con- 
gressmen were not submissionists. Though it was foreign 
to Toombs's practise to confess himself in a quandary, he 
was now probably in serious doubt whether tactical advan- 
tage, which was all he considered to be at issue, would be 
best promoted by the acceptance or the rejection of Clay- 
ton's plan. For the time being, however, his major interest 
lay in the presidential campaign, in the shaping of which he 
had already had a good deal to do. 

* Letter of Stephens, Aug. 30, 1848, to the editor of the Federal Union, 
Milledgeville, Ga., published in the Federal Union, Sept. 12, 1848; also 
letter to R. S. Burch, June 15, 1855, in the American Historical Review, VIII, 
91-97. t Extract published in the Federal Union, Aug. 26, 1851. 



S8 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

In company with many other Whigs, Toombs had wearied 
of Henry Clay's perpetual candidacy. The movement 
against Clay was spontaneous in widely separated parts 
of the country. As early as the summer of 1846 Thurlow 
Weed of New York adopted as his choice for the Whig 
candidacy Zachary Taylor, who was then a colonel in Mexico, 
recently victorious at Resaca de la Palma and unconcerned 
with party politics; and thereafter Weed labored steadily 
for Taylor's nomination.* In Clay's own state a strong 
opposition to Clay's candidacy is indicated by letters from 
numerous fellow Kentuckians to J. J. Crittenden. f Toombs 
was in intimate relations with Crittenden and through him 
was in touch with this Kentucky movement. In a letter 
to James Thomas of Sparta, Ga., April 16, 1848, Toombs 
expressed his own views: 

" Clay has behaved very badly this winter. His ambition 
is as fierce as at any time of his life, and he is determined to 
rule or ruin the party. He has only power enough to ruin 
it. Rule it he never can again. . . . The truth is he has 
sold himself body and soul to the Northern Anti-slavery 
Whigs, and as little as they now think it, his friends in 
Georgia will find themselves embarrassed before the cam- 
paign is half over. I find myself a good deal denounced in 
my district for avowing my determination not to vote for 
him. It gives me not the least concern. I shall never be 
traitor enough to the true interests of my constituents to 
gratify them in this respect. I would rather offend than 
betray them. . . . The real truth is Clay was put up and 
pushed by Corwin and McLean, Greeley and Co., to break 
down Taylor in the South. Having made that use of him, 
they will toss him overboard at the Convention without 
decent burial. It is more than probable that a third can- 
didate may be brought forward, and Scott stands a good 
chance to be the man. For my part I am a Taylor man 
without a second choice." 

* Life of Thurlow Weed, I, 570, fF. 

t Originals in the Library of Congress, MSS. division, Crittenden 
papers, — e.g. letter of J. B. Kinkhead, Frankfort, Ky., Jan. 2, 1847. 



THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 59 

In the spring and summer Toombs aided in grooming 
Taylor for the campaign, glossing over his political crudities 
with success, buoyed by the hope and expectation that 
Taylor as President would prove amenable to Southern con- 
trol and would thus relieve the Southern Whigs from having 
to choose between loyalty to the Union and loyalty to the 
South. No sooner had Toombs and Stephens launched 
themselves in August upon a whirlwind campaign of stump 
speaking in Georgia than Stephens was disabled by stabs 
received in an affray with Judge Cone in Atlanta. Toombs 
thereupon redoubled his own efforts and carried the state 
for Taylor. He then returned to Congress in December 
and found sectional trouble brewing more actively than 
before. i 

The new feature now to be dealt with was a movement 
inaugurated by the Southern Democrats in Congress to 
break down party alignments and establish a Southern block 
in the two houses for the safeguarding of Southern interests. 
As early as August 21, 1847, Isaac E. Holmes, Congressman 
from the Charleston district of South Carolina, had written 
to Howell Cobb: "I wish the Southern Representatives 
would consent to act together without regard to Whig or 
Democrat. The Wilmot Proviso is paramount to all party. 
The North is resolved to crush slavery — are we equally 
in the South resolved at all hazards to defend it?" And on 
July I of the next year W. C. Daniell, a Democratic leader in 
Northern Georgia, wrote Cobb: "If the hostility to slavery 
has become so extended as to tempt Martin Van Buren to 
bow low and worship at its shrine for the highest office in 
the gift of the people, how long will it be before our own 
security will require that we withdraw from those who 
deem themselves contaminated by our touch ? And how long 
before we shall deem those our best friends who would tell 
us that our only dependence is upon ourselves?" Van 
Buren's apostasy to the Free-soilers could not but strengthen 



6o THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

the suspicion that such other Northern Democrats as Cass, 
Dallas and Buchanan were held to their "Southern prin- 
ciples" only by their desire for the presidential office; and 
the heavy defections from Cass to Van Buren at the polls 
in November persuaded a multitude of Southerners that 
the friendship of the Democratic rank and file at the North 
was no longer a safe reliance. Finally the occurrence of 
bitter debates in both houses in December and January 
brought affairs to such a climax that Calhoun called a series 
of meetings of all the Southern Senators and Representa- 
tives with a view to the issuance of a common address to 
the country and the establishment of a Southern phalanx 
in Congress regardless of previous party affiliations. The 
Southern Whigs however, having just elected their candidate, 
himself a Louisiana slaveholder, to the presidency, resisted 
this appeal; and Toombs led the resistance. Along with 
about eighty other Southern Whigs and Democrats he 
attended the meetings, but only to denounce Calhoun's 
proposals and to refuse, along with the rest of the Whigs, 
to sign the address. Four of the Democrats attending also 
refused to sign. These four, Howell Cobb, Linn Boyd, 
Beverly L. Clarke and John H. Lumpkin, when scolded for 
disloyalty, issued an address of their own, February 26, 
attributing the current evils to the machinations of the 
Whigs and urging the firm cementing of the national Demo- 
cratic party as the best course for the safety of the South. 
■ Toombs's motive was of course to allay the sectional 
discord, patch up the slavery issue and give Taylor's incom- 
ing administration the best possible chance for peace and 
prosperity. On January 3, 1849, he wrote to Crittenden, 
then serving as governor of Kentucky: 

" This Southern movement is a bold strike to disorganize 
the Southern Whigs and either to destroy Genl. Taylor in 
advance or compel him to throw himself in the hands of a 
large section of the Democracy at the South. The South- 



THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 61 

ern Democracy are perfectly desperate. Their Northern allies 
they clearly see will unite with the Free-soilers, and even now 
the peace is broken between them forever. Almost every man 
of the Southern Democrats have joined Calhoun's movement. 
After mature consideration we concluded to go into the meet- 
ing in order to control and crush it; it has been a delicate 
business, but so far we have succeeded well, and I think will 
be able to overthrow it completely on the 15th. inst," 

Discussing the prospects in Congress, Toombs continued: 
"The Northern Whigs have receded on the District of Colum- 
bia question and will come square up to safe ground on 
slavery in the District. As to the cursed 'slave pens,' we 
will try to trade them off to advantage. No honest man 
would regret their annihilation if done rightly." That is 
to say, he was ready to agree to the abolition of the slave 
trade in the District, and hoped by that means to dissuade 
the Northern Whigs from their purpose of abolishing slavery 
there. "The territorial question," he continued further, 
"I think this gold fever by drawing a large American popula- 
tion into California will make more easy to adjust. Upon 
the whole I see nothing desperate in settling these legacies 
of Polk's administration unless we have treason in our 
ranks. The temper of the North is good; and with kind- 
ness, and patronage skillfully adjusted, I think we can work 
out of present troubles, preserve the Union, and disappoint 
bad men and traitors."^* 

On January 22 Toombs wrote Crittenden again: 

" We have been in a good deal of trouble here for the last 
month about this slavery question, but I now believe we 
begin to see the light. I came here very anxious to settle 
the slavery question before the 4th. of March. The longer 
it remains on hand the worse it gets; and I am confident 
it will be harder to settle after than before the 4th. of March. 

* This letter, the original of which is preserved in the Library of Con- 
gress, was absent-mindedly dated by Toombs, "Dec. 3, 1848." It was 
clearly written a month afterward. 



62 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

We have therefore concluded to make a decided effort 
at it now. Preston will this morning move to make the 
territorial bills the special order for an early day, which 
will bring the subject before us. We shall then attempt 
to erect all of California and that portion of N. Mexico 
lying west of the Sierra Membres into a state as soon as she 
forms a constitution and asks it, which we think the present 
state of anarchy there will soon drive her to do. ... I think 
we can carry this or something very like it. The principle I 
act upon is this: It cannot be a slave country; we have only 
the point of honor to save; this will save it and rescue the 
country from all danger from agitation. The Southern Whigs 
are now nearly unanimous in favor of it. . . . If you see any 
objections to it, write me immediately, for we will keep our- 
selves in a situation to ease off if it is desirable to do so." 

In the same letter Toombs continued his narrative con- 
cerning the movement for a Southern address: 

" We have completely foiled Calhoun in his miserable 
attempt to form a Southern party. . . . We had a regular 
flareup in the last meeting, and at the call of Calhoun I 
told them briefly what we [i.e. the Whigs] were at. I told 
him that the Union of the South was neither possible nor 
desirable until we were ready to dissolve the Union; that 
we certainly did not intend to advise the people now to look 
anywhere else than to their own government for the pre- 
vention of apprehended evils; that we did not expect an admin- 
istration which we had brought into power would do any act 
or permit any act to be done which it would become necessary 
for our safety to rebel at; . . . and that we intended to 
stand by the government until it committed an overt act of 
aggression upon our rights, which neither we nor the country 
ever expected. We then by a vote of 42 to 44 voted to re- 
commit his report (we had before this tried to kill it directly 
but failed). We hear the committee have whittled it down 
to a weak milk and water address to the whole Union. We 
are opposed to any address whatever, but the Democrats will 
probably outvote us tonight and put forth the one reported; 
but it will not get more than two or three Whig names." * 

* Coleman, Life of Crittenden, I, 335, 336. The address adopted that 
night may be found in Calhoun's Works, VI, 290-3 13. 



THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 63 

In a further letter to Crittenden, February 9,* Toombs 
continued his hopeful narrative of the Southern Whig plan 
for the prompt settlement of the territorial issue: 

" Mr. Preston made his speech and proposed his bill on 
Tuesday. His speech was a very good one and its effect 
very happy. We shall carry the measure easily in the House. 
It meets with its bitterest opposition from Calhoun's tail and 
Giddings's. New England and New York want to hold off 
until next session. Their object is unmistakably to make 
themselves necessary to the adm[inistration] in carrying it, 
and demanding terms for their service. We shall bring them 
in, I think, but not if we can carry it without them. The 
only difficulty is in the Senate. Webster, Benton and Cal- 
houn and his tail are its great opponents there. The two 
first have no tail, and we are daily shortening that of the 
latter. ... I consider the question for all practical purposes 
as now settled, whatever may be its fate at this session." 

Toombs was of course too sanguine. Preston's bill, 
drawn in the form of an amendment to a pending territorial 
bill, provided for the immediate erection of all the vast 
region acquired from Mexico into a single state and its 
admission into the Union by the first of the coming October. 
Its purpose, identical with that of the more famous Toombs 
bill of 1856 for the admission of Kansas, was to stop the 
quarrel over the territory by converting it into a state, 
empowered like other states to determine its own institu- 
tions. On February 27, however, in committee of the whole, 
a proviso was added to Preston's amendment by a vote of 
91 to 87 prohibiting slavery in the proposed state; and 
when just afterward the amendment was put upon its 
adoption not a single vote was cast in its favor. Toombs 
took this as a test question, and at once pronounced his 
conviction that the parting of the ways had been reached. 
"When this committee," said he, "determined to put the 
prohibitory clause upon the amendment of the gentleman 
* Erroneously dated Jan. 9 in the original. 



64 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

from Virginia [Mr. Preston], all chance of pacification was 
at an end." With his optimism dashed, he began to be 
unwillingly convinced that his trust in the will and power 
of the Whig party to preserve the Union on the basis of 
justice to the South had been unwarranted, and he was 
gradually driven to endorse and assume the leadership of 
that movement to form a Southern block which only a few 
weeks previously he had vehemently denounced. 

After losing his faith in the congressional prospect Toombs 
continued to hope that the new President would prove a 
bulwark against Northern aggressions. The legislature of 
Virginia adopted resolutions of resistance at all hazards 
against the enactment and enforcement of the Wilmot 
Proviso, and numerous other legislatures and conventions 
in the South followed the example. Toombs, however, held 
his peace. Taylor at the time of his inauguration was in 
sympathy with Toombs's wish to avoid the impending crisis 
by providing statehood instead of a territorial regime in the 
debatable land; but Taylor applied the plan only to the 
California portion. He despatched Thomas Butler King 
to California as an agent to promote a state-forming move- 
ment; and as a result California soon applied for admission, 
with approximately her present boundaries and with a non- 
slavery constitution; but New Mexico, including Utah, 
remained with unchanged status as the chief bone of con- 
tention. 

Meanwhile the two or three anti-slavery Whigs within 
Taylor's cabinet, and Seward as an outside adviser, began 
to dominate the unsophisticated President's mind. Toombs 
now apologized for him on the ground of inexperience. He 
wrote for instance to Crittenden's daughter, Mrs. Coleman, 
June 22, 1849: "Genl. Taylor is in a new position, his duties 
and responsibilities are vast and complicated, and besides 
he is among strangers whose aims and objects are not known 
to him. Therefore that he should commit mistakes, even 



THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 65 

grave errors, must be expected; but I have an abiding con- 
fidence that he is honest and sincere and will repair them 
when seen. If I am mistaken in this, no man in the nation 
will more bitterly repent the events of the last eighteen 
months than I will, and I think that in that event I shall 
have made my last presidential campaign." In the fall 
uncontradicted reports began to appear in the newspapers 
of expressions by Taylor declaring a sense of the evils of 
slavery and a hostility to its further territorial spread. This 
caused such a reaction in the South that on the one hand 
the Democrats carried virtually all of the state elections and 
on the other hand the sentiment for aggressive sectional 
resistance became increasingly widespread and outspoken. 
Toombs was by this time very uneasy, but still he hoped 
that Taylor might be brought again under Southern control 
when Congress assembled. 

The state of affairs and the ensuing developments were 
described by Toombs several months afterward in a letter 
to Crittenden: * 

" During the last summer the government, with the concur- 
rence of the whole cabinett except Crawford, threw the entire 
patronage of the North in the hands of Seward and his 
party. This was done under some foolish idea of Preston's 
that they would get rid of a Northern competition for 1852, 
as Seward stood for 1856. The effect of which was to enable 
Seward to take the entire control of the New York organiza- 
tion and force the whole Northern Whig party into the 
extreme anti-slavery position of Seward, which of course 
sacked the South. I knew the effect of this policy would 
certainly destroy the Whig party and perhaps endanger the 
Union. When I came to Washington, as I expected, I 
found the whole Whig party expecting to ^ass the Proviso, 
and that Taylor would not veto, and that thereby the Whig 
party of the North were to be built up at the expense of the 
Northern Democracy, who from political and party considera- 
tions had stood quasi-opposed to the Proviso. I saw Genl. 

* April 23, 1850. See infra p. 80, footnote. 



66 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

T. and talked fully with him upon the subject, and while h'e 
stated he had given and would give no pledges either way 
about the Proviso, he gave me clearly to understand that if it 
was passed he would sign it. 

" My course became instantly fixed and settled. As I 
would not hesitate to oppose the Proviso even [to] the extent 
of a dissolution of the Union, I could not for a moment regard 
any party considerations in the treatment of the question. 
I therefore determined to put the test to the Whig party 
and abandon its organization upon its refusal. Both events 
happened. To defeat this policy it was of the first impor- 
tance to prevent the organization of the House going into the 
hands of the Northern Whig party. I should have gone to 
any extent necessary to effect that object. They foolishly 
did it themselves. Without fatiguing you with details, my 
whole subsequent course has been governed by this line of 
policy. I have determined to settle the question honorably 
to my own section if possible, at any rate and every hazard, 
totally indifferent to what might be its effect upon Genl. 
Taylor or his administration." 

It was well known that the new House about to assemble 
would comprise 112 Democrats, 105 Whigs and 13 Free- 
soilers, and that the anti-slavery majority among the Whigs 
if they could bind the whole party to the support of one of 
their own number could elect a Speaker with the aid of the 
Free-soil votes and organize the House in such a way that 
the Proviso legislation could not fail to pass. Toombs 
resolved to resist this plan with all his might. At the same 
time he repelled the overtures that the Democrats made 
for his support, even though Howell Cobb was their nomi- 
nee, in order to preserve such chance as he might have as a 
Whig to exert pressure upon the President. He attended 
the Whig caucus for nominating a Speaker, on the night of 
December i, and there demanded as a condition of his con- 
tinued regularity as a Whig that the caucus give assurances 
to the Southern interest by adopting a resolution offered 
by him to the effect that Congress ought not to put any 
restriction upon any state institutions in the territories 



THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 (>-] 

and ought not to abolish slavery in the District of Colum- 
bia. When this was rejected, Toombs bolted the caucus, 
followed by Stephens and Owen of Georgia, Morton of 
Virginia, Cabell of Florida and Hilliard of Alabama, The 
remainder of the caucus then nominated Winthrop of Massa- 
chusetts. 

When on December 3 the House met and cast its first 
ballot for Speaker, 103 Democrats voted for Cobb, 96 Whigs 
for Winthrop, 8 Free-soilers for Wilmot, the six bolting 
Whigs for Gentry of Tennessee, and the remainder scatter- 
ing; total 221, with nine members absent. On December 
5 after eleven more ballots had been taken with virtually 
identical results, Andrew Johnson moved a resolution for 
election by plurality vote. This was tabled by a huge 
majority. During the next week twenty-nine more ballots 
were taken, with Potter of Ohio replacing Cobb as the 
recipient of the Democratic votes but with Winthrop lead- 
ing with a maximum of 102 votes. In a series of ballots 
on December 11 and 12 the Democrats swung to W. J. 
Brown of Indiana. Before the last of these, the fortieth 
ballot, both Winthrop and Wilmot withdrew their candi- 
dacies; and on that ballot Brown received most of the Free- 
soil votes and would have been elected had not several 
Southern Democrats in suspicion of anti-slavery collusion 
voted against him. Immediately after the ballot the air- 
ing of these suspicions brought out the fact that Brown had 
written to Wilmot that if elected he would "constitute the 
committees on the District of Columbia, on Territories and 
on the Judiciary in such manner as shall be satisfactory to 
yourself and your friends." At the same time he had inti- 
mated in reply to questions by Southern Democrats that he 
was not giving pledges to the Free-soilers and was hostile 
to the Wilmot policy. The exposure of Brown's duplic- 
ity caused a great furor in the House. The excitement 
lasted for several days, with charges of disunion intent made 



68 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

against some of the Southerners, and the lie passed between 
Duer of New York and Meade of Virginia. In the midst 
of this turmoil, with a motion pending to elect Cobb Speaker, 
Toombs delivered, December 13, the first of a series of 
impromptu speeches so defiant, with climaxes so brilliant 
and effective that, together with his powerful set-speech of 
February 27, they gave him the undisputed leadership of 
the aggressive-defense movement. 

After a brief denunciation of the underhanded trick of 
the Free-soilers and an explanation of his own refusal to 
vote with the Northern Whigs in the speakership contest, 
he launched himself upon the general question of union and 
disunion: 

" It seems from the remarks of the gentleman from New 
York that we are to be intimidated by eulogies upon the 
Union and denunciations of those who are not ready to 
sacrifice national honor, essential interests and constitu- 
tional rights upon its altar. Sir, I have as much attachment 
to the Union of these states, under the Constitution of our 
fathers, as any freeman ought to have. I am ready to 
concede and sacrifice for it whatever a just and honorable 
man ought to sacrifice. I will do no more. I have not 
heeded the aspersions of those who did not understand, or 
desired to misrepresent, my conduct or opinions in relation 
to these questions which, in my judgment, so vitally affect 
it. The time has come when I shall not only utter them but 
make them the basis of my political action here. I do not, 
then, hesitate, to avow before this House and the country, 
and in the presence of the living God, that if by your legis- 
lation you seek to drive us from the territories of California 
and New Mexico, purchased by the common blood and treas- 
ure of the whole people, and to abolish slavery in this Dis- 
trict, thereby attempting to fix a national degradation upon 
half the states of this Confederacy, / am for disunion; and if 
my physical courage be equal to the maintenance of my 
convictions of right and duty, I will devote all I am and all 
I have on earth to its consummation. 

"From 1787 to this hour, the people of the South have 
asked nothing but justice — nothing but the maintenance 



THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 69 

of the principles and the spirit which controlled our fathers 
in the formation of the Constitution. Unless we are un- 
worthy of our ancestors, we will never accept less as a con- 
dition of Union. A great constitutional right which was 
declared by a distinguished Northern justice of the Supreme 
Court (Judge Baldwin) to be the corner-stone of the Union, 
and without which he avers, in a judicial decision, it would 
never have been formed, has already practically been abro- 
gated in all of the non-slaveholding states. I mean the 
right to reclaim fugitives from labor. I ask any and every 
Northern man on this floor to answer me, now, if this is not 
true — if this great right, indispensable to the formation of 
the Union, is any longer, for any practical purpose, a living 
principle? There are none to deny it. You admit you have 
not performed your constitutional duty, that you withhold 
from us a right which was one of our main inducements to 
the Union; yet you wonder that we look upon your eulogies of 
a Union whose most sacred principles you have thus trampled 
underfoot, as nothing better than mercenary, hypocritical cant. 
" This District was ceded immediately after the Constitu- 
tion was formed. It was the gift of Maryland to her sister 
states for the location of their common government. Its 
municipal law maintained and protected domestic slavery. 
You accepted it. Your honor was pledged for its mainte- 
nance as a national capital. Your faith was pledged to the 
maintenance of the rights of the people who were thus 
placed under your care. Your fathers accepted the trust, 
protected the slaveholder and all other citizens in their 
rights, and in all respects faithfully and honestly executed 
the trust; but they have been gathered to their fathers, and 
it was left to their degenerate sons to break the faith with us, 
and insolently to attempt to play the master where they were 
admitted as brethren. I trust, sir, if the representatives 
of the North prove themselves unworthy of their ancestors, 
we shall not prove ourselves unworthy of ours; that we have 
the courage to defend what they had the valor to win. The 
territories are the common property of the people of the 
United States, purchased by their common blood and treas- 
ure. You are their common agents; it is your duty while 
they are in a territorial state, to remove all impediments to 
their free enjoyment by all sections and all people of the 
Union, the slaveholder and the non-slaveholder. You have 



70 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

given the strongest indications that you will not perform this 
trust — that you will appropriate to yourselves all of this 
territory, perpetrate all of these wrongs which I have 
enumerated; yet with these declarations on your lips, when 
Southern men refuse to act in party caucuses with you, in 
which you have a controlling majority — when we ask the 
simplest guarantee for the future — we are denounced out 
of doors as recusants and factionists, and indoors we are met 
with the cry of 'Union, Union.' Sir, we have passed that 
point. It is too late. I have used all my energies from 
the beginning of this question to save the country from this 
convulsion. I have resisted what I deemed unnecessary 
and hurtful agitation. I hoped against hope that a sense 
of justice and patriotism would induce the North to settle 
these questions upon principles honorable and safe to both 
sections of the Union. I have planted myself upon a na- 
tional platform, resisting extremes at home and abroad, 
willingly subjecting myself to the aspersions of enemies, 
and far worse than that, the misconstruction of friends, de- 
termined to struggle for and accept any fair and honorable 
adjustment of these questions. I have almost despaired 
of any such, at least from this House. We must arouse 
and appeal to the nation. We must tell them, boldly and 
frankly, that we prefer any calamities to submission to such 
degradation and injury as they would entail upon us; that 
we hold that to be the consummation of all evil. I have 
stated my positions. I have not argued them. I reserve 
that for a future occasion. These are principles upon which 
I act here. Give me securities that the power of the organi- 
zation which you seek will not be used to the injury of my 
constituents, then you can have my cooperation but not till 
then. Grant them and you prevent the recurrence of the 
disgraceful scenes of the last twenty-four hours, and restore 
tranquillity to the country. Refuse them, and as far as I 
am concerned, 'let discord reign forever.'" * 

The reporter notes that "several times during the delivery 
of these remarks Mr. T. was interrupted by loud bursts of 
applause." Stephens of Georgia and Colcock of South 
Carolina followed at once in speeches endorsing Toombs, 

* Congressional Globe, 31st. Cong., ist. sess., pp. 27, 28. 



THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 71 

and next day Andrew Johnson of Tennessee and Clingman 
of North CaroHna made similar expressions, the latter 
incidentally pronouncing Toombs's speech "one of the 
ablest, most forceful and eloquent he had ever heard, as 
was evident from the profound and excited sensation it had 
produced in the House." 

To escape from the dangers of this excitement the House 
now adopted, with few but Toombs dissenting, a resolu- 
tion to return to its ballotings and continue them without 
debate until an election should be effected. In the next 
few ballots the vote was much more scattered than before, 
with Boyd of Kentucky leading for the Whigs and Stanley 
of North Carolina for the Democrats. No election by mere 
balloting was in sight. On December 17 a new plurality 
motion was offered and promptly tabled, and then a resolu- 
tion to appoint a committee of three Whigs and three Demo- 
crats to report a plan for electing a Speaker was offered and 
tabled. After another fruitless ballot this Whig-Democrat 
committee resolution was renewed and again tabled by a 
majority of but one vote. Next day the plurality resolu- 
tion, again introduced, was opposed by Toombs who declared 
that the House until organized had not the right to make 
any rules whatever. "They were not a law-making power;" 
he declared, "nobody knew their right to sit here; they had 
not done their first duty as members of the House of Repre- 
sentatives; they had not taken the oath, which bound them 
to the throne of the living God, to obey the Constitution of 
the United States; they could neither make rules for the 
House nor for the country." Thereupon the resolution was 
again tabled and five more fruitless ballots taken, Winthrop 
again appearing as the candidate of the regular Whigs, and 
the bolters still showing no slightest sign of relenting. 

On December 20, Giddings, as a Free-soil spokesman, 
brought it to light that on the preceding night Whig and 
Democratic caucuses had each appointed a committee to 



72 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

consult with the committee- appointed by the other and 
devise a mode of organizing the House. After another fruit- 
less ballot the House adjourned over the week-end. As 
soon as Monday's session began, December 22, Mr. Stanton 
of Tennessee, who had been appointed by the Democratic 
caucus as a member of its conference committee, rose and 
said that he desired to present to the House a proposition 
which had resulted from the conference of the two caucus 
committees. Root, an Ohio Free-soiler, called Stanton to 
order, when Toombs took the floor and executed an oratori- 
cal and spectacular tour de Jorce. His purpose of course 
was to prevent the threatened coalition between the Demo- 
crats and the regular Whigs in support of the plan for which 
Mr. Stanton was trying to secure the attention of the House. 
Toombs began by denying afresh the power of the House to 
pass a rule prohibiting debate. Several members attempted 
to interrupt him by calls to order and attempts to introduce 
resolutions, but Toombs held his ground. In such cases 
of hubbub the jaded reporter usually contented himself 
with writing that the confusion in the House was so great 
that nothing could be heard at the desk; but in this case 
he seems to have been spurred by Toombs's verve to achieve 
a stenographic triumph of his own. As reported in the 
Congressional Globe * the speech is one of the finest examples 
of vigorous oratory to be found in forensic records. To be 
appreciated, however, it should be read in full; and its 
length is too great for it to be reprinted here. 

Toombs's effort was magnificent, but though he quelled 
the tumult upon the floor he could not conquer the joint 
strength of the two main party organizations. A motion 
to rescind the rule against debate was defeated. Then 
Mr. Stanton introduced his resolution from the two caucus 
committees, that the House proceed at once to the election 
of a Speaker, and that after three more ballots with no 
* 31st. Cong., 1st. sess., pp. 61-63. 



THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 73 

member receiving a majority the roll be again called and 
the member receiving the highest vote, provided it be a 
majority of a quorum, be declared Speaker. This plurality 
rule was adopted by 113 votes to 106; and after the three 
preliminary roll-calls the sixty-third ballot was taken with 
the result that Howell Cobb received 102 votes, Winthrop 
99, Wilmot 8, Morehead and Stephens 4 and i respectively 
of the bolting Whigs, and 7 scattering. Cobb was accord- 
ingly declared elected. For a month afterward, however, 
though the bolting Whigs no longer followed an obstruc- 
tionist programme, the House wasted most of its time 
balloting for clerk and doorkeeper. 

The Senate meanwhile was receiving from without and 
within a flood of memorials, resolutions and bills concerning 
all the vexed phases of the slavery question. Clay proposed 
his "omnibus bill" on January 29, and this became the 
principal subject of interminable Senate debates in the 
months following. In the House the bulk of the members 
were so loth to begin the slavery battle that even the dis- 
cussion of the President's annual message was postponed 
till February 12, and until then no one but Clingman of 
North Carolina and Brown of Mississippi on behalf of 
Southern rights and Root, the Ohio Free-soiler, attempted to 
raise any sectional debate. On February 13, President Tay- 
lor m a special message presented the volunteer anti-slavery 
constitution with which the people of California, without 
the authority of an enabling act, were asking for statehood. 
For the three following days members contented themselves 
with delivering set speeches on various phases of the slavery 
issue. Then on the i8th Mr. Doty of Wisconsin introduced 
a resolution to instruct the committee on territories to 
prepare and report a bill for the admission of California with 
the constitution which had been communicated to the House 
by the President; and on this Mr. Doty demanded the 
previous question. Mr. Inge of Alabama moved to table 



74 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

the resolution, but his motion was lost by 70 to 121. By 
this the Northern majority announced its intention to force 
the bill through without permitting any amendment or 
debate. Many of the Southerners were in favor of Cali- 
fornia's admission, but virtually all of them demanded that 
the territorial question should be first adjusted. The whole 
Southern delegation accordingly with grim determination 
resorted at once to obstructive tactics. Motions to adjourn 
alternated with motions to go into committee of the whole. 
With Cobb in the chair every member who wished to make 
a privileged obstructive motion was sure to be recognized; 
and the minority was sufficiently numerous to require the 
yeas and nays upon every motion. The roll, two hundred 
and thirty names long, was called again and again with 
monotonous regularity throughout the day and half the 
night. Relations became strained between the sectional 
groups within each party. At length, with the hope of reliev- 
ing the tension, the conciliatory Mr. McClernand of Illinois 
walked over to where Toombs and Stephens, the managers 
of the obstruction, were sitting, and inquired of them whether 
by any means the strain could be ended. In reply they 
explained their position fully, that they were resisting the 
California bill only as a means of securing the prior settle- 
ment of the Utah and New Mexico questions on the basis 
of no congressional exclusion of slavery therein. These 
propositions were put in writing and McClernand circulated 
them among the Northern members with a view to procur- 
ing an adjournment.* Motions to adjourn, however, con- 
tinued to be defeated until at midnight the House acquiesced 
in a novel ruling by the Speaker that the legislative day had 
ended and Doty's resolution was no longer in order for con- 
sideration. On the following night a conference was held 
at Cobb's house between Toombs, Stephens, Cobb and Boyd 
from the South and McClernand and other friends of com- 
* A. H. Stephens, War Between the States, II, 201-203. 



THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 75 

promise from the North. It was there agreed that all 
present, and Mr. Douglas also who had empowered Mr. 
McClernand to speak for him as chairman of the Senate 
committee on territories, should combine their efforts to 
procure the organization of the territories on the basis 
required, and the admission of California, and also to 
defeat any attempt at abolishing slavery in the District of 
Columbia.* 

Before these plans had ripened into bills, however, the 
issue was reopened in the House, on February 27. In 
committee of the whole Toombs took the floor, saying that 
in view of the clear determination of the House to deal with 
California he would discuss that question. Mr. Doty 
thereupon, Toombs yielding for the purpose, introduced a 
bill for the admission of California, and Toombs, resuming, 
presented in a maturely-considered speech during the allotted 
hour views characteristic of the more temperate of the men 
who now stood for Southern rights without superior regard 
to party attachments. He said in part: 

" Mr. Chairman: There is a general discontent among the 
people of fifteen states of the Union against this Govern- 
ment. ... It is based upon a well-founded apprehension 
of a fixed purpose on the part of the non-slaveholding states 
of the Union to destroy their political rights. . . . We are 
now, sir, in a transition state; heretofore the distribution 
of political power under our system has made sectional 
aggression impossible. I think it would have been wise 
to have secured permanency to such distribution by the 
fundamental law. It was not done. The course of events, 
the increase of population in the Northern portion of the 
republic and the addition of new states, are about to give, 
if they have not already given, the non-slaveholding states 
a majority in both branches of Congress, and they have a 
large and increasing majority of the population of the Union. 
These causes have brought us to the point where we are 
to test the sufiiciency of written constitutions to protect 

* A. H. Stephens, War Between the States, pp. 203, 204. 



'jG THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

the rights of a minority against a majority of the people. 
Upon the determination of this question will depend and 
ought to depend the permanency of the government, . . . 
Our security, under the Constitution, is based solely upon 
good faith. There is nothing in its structure which makes 
aggression permanently impossible. It requires neither 
skill nor genius nor courage to perpetrate it; it requires only 
bad faith. I have studied the histories of nations and the 
characteristics of mankind to but little purpose if that quality 
shall be found wanting in the future administration of its 
affairs. . . . 

" I have heard in this hall, within a few days past, fierce 
and bitter denunciations from Northern lips of Abolitionists 
— those of the Garrison school who sometimes chance to 
meet in Faneuil Hall. In my judgment their line of policy 
is the fairest, most just, most honest and defensible of all 
the enemies of our institutions. And such will be the judg- 
ment of impartial history. 'They shun no question, they 
wear no mask.' They admit some, at least, of the constitu- 
tional obligations to protect slavery. They hold these 
obligations inconsistent with good conscience, and they 
therefore denounce the [Constitution] as 'a covenant with 
Hell,' and struggle earnestly for its overthrow. If their con- 
duct is devoid of every other virtue and every other claim to 
our respect, it is at least consistent. They do not seek, as 
many members do here, to get the benefits and shun the 
burdens of the bargain. 

" Notwithstanding the constitutional safeguards, . . . the 
enemies of slavery here have attempted, and are now attempt- 
ing, to get by implication that power to war upon it which 
was so studiously withheld. . . . This government has no 
power to declare what shall or what shall not be property, 
or to regulate the manner or places of its employment, except 
in the cases of patent rights and copyrights. This power 
belongs to the state governments to the extent that it exists 
anywhere. Whatever any of the states recognize as property 
it is the duty of this government to protect. When it places 
itself in hostility to property thus secured, it becomes the 
enemy of the people and ought to be corrected or sub- 
verted. . . . 

" We do not demand, as is constantly alleged on this floor 
and elsewhere, that you shall establish slavery in the terri- 



THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 77 

tories. I have endeavored to show that you have no power 
to do so. Slavery is a 'fixed fact' in your system. We 
ask protection from all hostile impediments to the intro- 
duction and peaceful enjoyment of all of our property in the 
territories; whether these impediments arise from foreign 
laws or from any pretended domestic authority, we hold it 
to be your duty to remove them. . . . The bill now before 
us for the admission of California . . . settles nothing but 
the addition of another non-slaveholding state to the Union, 
thus giving the predominating interest additional power to 
settle the territorial questions which it leaves unadjusted. In 
this state of the question it cannot receive my support. . . . 

" We are now daily threatened with every form of extermi- 
nation if we do not tamely acquiesce in whatever legislation 
the majority may choose to impose upon us. . . . Gentlemen 
may spare their threats. . . . The sentiment of every true 
man at the South will be, we took the Union and the Con- 
stitution together — we will have both or we will have 
neither. This cry of the Union is the masked battery from 
behind which the Constitution and the rights of the South 
are to be assailed. . . . 

" I have never yet given a sectional vote in these halls. 
Whenever the state of public opinion in my own section 
shall deter me, or the injustice of the other shall incapacitate 
me from supporting the true interests of the whole nation 
and the just demands of every part of the republic, I will 
then surrender a trust which I can no longer hold with 
honor. . . . 

" The first act of legislative hostility to slavery is the proper 
point for Southern resistance. . . . Though hostile inter- 
ference is the point of resistance, non-interference is not the 
measure of our rights. We are entitled to non-interference 
from alien and foreign governments. . . . You owe us more. 
You owe us protection. Withhold it and you make us aliens 
in our own government. Our hostility to it then becomes a 
necessity — a necessity justified by our honor, our interests 
and our common safety. . . . We had our institutions when 
you sought our alliance. We were content with them then, 
and we are content with them now. We have not sought 
to thrust them upon you, nor to interfere with yours. If 
you believe what you say, that yours are so much the best 
to promote the happiness and good government of society, 



78 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

why do you fear our equal competition with you in the 
territories? We only ask that our common government 
shall protect us both equally until the territories shall be 
ready to be admitted as states into the Union, then to leave 
their citizens free to adopt any domestic policy in reference 
to this subject which in their judgment may best promote 
their interest and their happiness. The demand is just. 
... I can see no reasonable prospect that you will grant it. 
The fact cannot longer be concealed — the declaration of 
many members here confirms it, the action of this House is 
daily demonstrating it — that we are in the midst of a 
legislative revolution, the object of which is to trample 
under foot the Constitution and the laws and to make the 
will of the majority the supreme law of the land. In this 
emergency our duty is clear; it is to stand by the Constitu- 
tion and the laws, to observe in good faith all its require- 
ments until the wrong is consummated, until the act of 
exclusion is put upon the statute book; it will then be 
demonstrated that the Constitution is powerless for our 
protection; it will then be not only the right but the duty of 
the slaveholding states to resume the powers which they 
have conferred upon this government, and to seek new 
safeguards for their future security. It will then become our 
right to prevent the application of the resources of the 
republic to the maintenance of the wrongful act. . . . 

" [The description by Mr. Mann of Massachusetts of the 
dangers threatening the South] is an appeal from the argu- 
ment to our fears. I answer that appeal in the language of 
a distinguished Georgian who yet lives to arouse the hearts 
of his countrymen to resistance to wrong: When the argu- 
ment is exhausted we will stand by our arms." * 

Toombs here showed a sense of tremendous responsibility 
and a resolution to restrain himself from provoking the 
tyranny which he foresaw and a determination to do all that 
lay in his power in a parliamentary way to obstruct the 
culmination which would force him to strike for Southern 
independence. His argument was closely similar to that 
presented by Calhoun five days later in his great speech 

* Congressional Globe Appendix, 31st. Cong., ist. sess., pp. 198-201. 



THECOMPROMISEOF 1850 79 

of March 4, Calhoun of course recognized this, and a few 
days before his death at the end of March he had a con- 
ference with Toombs in which he expressed his despair of 
Southern rights within the Union, spoke of his own approach- 
ing death, and in a sense let fall his mantle upon Toombs's 
shoulders as the leader of the younger group of Southern 
statesmen.* 



In the Senate, Webster's Seventh of March speech mel- 
lowed the spirit of the discussion, and the death of Calhoun 
impressed his colleagues with the solemnity of their duty 
in solving the problem which had worn his life away. Taylor 
and his cabinet, however, were unfriendly to the proposed 
compromise, and progress with it was very slow. In the 
House no way was found to soften the asperities. Set 
speeches on the slavery issue in committee of the whole, 
first frequent, then more seldom, then frequent again, 
filled the interims of other business. Clay's compromise 
bill was of course actively discussed in the House even while 
it was pending only in the Senate. Without waiting further 
for Senate action, Mr. McCIernand gave notice in the House 
on April 3 of his intention to introduce a bill comprising Clay's 
proposals regarding California, Utah, New Mexico, and the 
Texas boundary. Toombs wrote to Crittenden, April 23 : 

" In the course of events the policy of the cabinett has 
vacillated to and fro, but has finally settled upon the ground 
of admitting California and non-action as to the rest of the 
territories. Seward and his party have struck hands with 
them on this policy. But Stanley is the only Southern Whig 
who will stand by them. I think it likely the current of 
events may throw the whole of the Southern Whigs into 
opposition. Such a result will not deter us from our course. 
We are willing to admit California and pass territorial govern- 
ment on the principle of McClernand's bill. We will never 
take less. The government in furtherance of their stupid 

* Letter of C. S. Morehead, Washington, D.C., Mch. 31, 1850, to J. J. 
Crittenden. Coleman's Crittenden, I, 353. 



8o THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

and treacherous bargain with the North are endeavoring to 
defeat it. With their aid we could carry it almost without 
a count, as more than twenty-five Northern Democrats are 
pledged to it; but they may embarrass us and possibly 
(but I do not think probably) may defeat us; but our defeat 
will be their ruin." * 

But party considerations prevented action upon McCler- 
nand's bill, and the discussion dragged until the date, June 
II, on which the House had ordered the closing of debate in 
committee on Doty's resolution, drew near. Then members 
became more excited and vehement. On June 3, for example, 
Mr. Colcock, a Southern extremist, denounced Clay's plan of 
compromise on the ground that everything which it proposed 
to give the South it gave only in promise, while what it gave 
the North it gave in fact and in performance. Andrew John- 
son, a pro-slavery nationalist, on the other hand appealed on 
June 5 for concessions from all sides, expressing his firm devo- 
tion to the Union and the belief that its preservation was to be 
looked to as the surest support and protection of slavery. 

Upon the arrival of June 11 the Southerners had as yet 
found no means of defeating the Doty California resolution. 
They accordingly tried to postpone the time for closing the 
debate, and failing in this they adopted the device of offer- 
ing amendments and making five-minute speeches upon 
them, which the rules of the House permitted. This adroit 
method of obstruction threatened to continue interminably. 
Many of these brief speeches were utilized for reiterating 
arguments and for making recriminations, though most 
of them were delivered purely in order to consume the time 
of the House and baffle the majority. 

But Toombs never droned. On June 15 he electrified the 
House in a reply to Mr. Schenck: 

* MS. in the Library of Congress. Published with minor inaccuracies in 
Coleman's Life of Crittenden, I, 364-366, under the erroneous date of April 
25. 1850. 



THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 81 

"The gentleman from Ohio [has] just charged that the op- 
position to Cahfornia with her present constitution by the 
South was founded upon the anti-slavery clause in her con- 
stitution, and therefore, in the denial of this right of a peo- 
ple forming a state constitution to admit or exclude slavery. 
Mr. T. denied the fact and demanded proof. On the con- 
trary, he asserted that the South had uniformly held and 
maintained this right. That in 1820 on the Missouri ques- 
tion the North had denied it, but the South unanimously 
affirmed it. From that day till this the South, through all 
her authorized exponents of her opinions, has affirmed this 
doctrine. . . . But how stands the case with the North? 
She denied the truth of this great principle of constitutional 
right in 1820, acquiesced in the compromise then made as 
long as it was to her interest, and then repudiated the com- 
promise and reasserted her right to dictate constitutions to 
territories seeking admission into the Union. She put her 
anti-slavery proviso upon Oregon, and at the last session 
of Congress, when the present Secretary of the Navy [Mr. 
Preston] introduced a bill to authorize California to form 
a state government and come into the Union, leaving her 
free to act as she pleased upon the question of slavery, the 
North put the anti-slavery proviso upon this state bill. 
I know of no Northern Whig who voted against that proviso. 
A few gentlemen of the Democratic party from the North- 
west, and my friend from Illinois among them [Mr. Richard- 
son], boldly and honestly struck for the right and opposed 
it; but they were powerless against the tide of Northern 
opposition. The evidence is complete; the North repudiated 
this principle — and while for sinister and temporary pur- 
poses they may pretend to favor the President's plan, which 
affirms it, they will not sustain it. They will not find a right 
place to affirm it until they get California into the Union, 
and then they will throw off the mask and trample it under- 
foot. I intend to drag off the mask before the consummation 
of that act. We do not oppose California on account of the 
anti-slavery clause in her constitution. It was her right, 
and I am not even prepared to say that she acted unwisely 
in its exercise — that is her business; but I stand upon the 
great principle that the South has the right to an equal par- 
ticipation in the territories of the United States. I claim the 
right for her to enter them all with her property and securely 



82 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

to enjoy it. She will divide with you if you wish it; but the 
right to enter all or divide I shall never surrender. In my 
judgment this right, involving as it does political equality, is 
worth a thousand such Unions as we have, even if they each 
were a thousand times more valuable than this. I speak not 
for others but for myself. Deprive us of this right and ap- 
propriate this common property to yourselves, it is then your 
government, not mine. Then I am its enemy, and I will 
then, if I can, bring my children and my constituents to the 
altar of liberty, and like Hamilcar I would swear them to 
eternal hostility to your foul domination. Give us our just 
rights, and we are ready, as ever heretofore, to stand by the 
Union, every part of it, and its every interest. Refuse it and 
for one I will strike for independence" * 

The spirit of this impromptu, which Stephens in after 
years said produced the greatest sensation he had ever 
witnessed in the House, and which at once leaped into fame 
in the South as Toombs's "Hamilcar speech," was too bold 
for the Northern representatives to hope to wear it away. 
The Doty bill was allowed sleep in committee from that 
day for six weeks. 

Taylor's employment of the presidential influence against 
the Clay proposals formed an insuperable obstacle to the 
compromise project as long as Taylor lived. Toombs and 
Stephens had again endeavored to persuade him in its 
favor at the end of February, mentioning the prospect of 
the withdrawal of the South from the Union in the event 
of its failure. But Taylor had then angrily replied that the 
Union should be preserved at every hazard, and that he 
was prepared if need be to take his place at the head of the 
armed forces of the nation to put down any attempt to dis- 
turb it.f Their dread of the consequences to follow the 
defeat of the Compromise forbade its Southern advocates 
to accept as final even such a rebuff as this. On July i the 

* Congressional Globe, 31st. Cong., ist. sess., p. 1216. 
t A. C. Cole, The Whig Party in the South (MS.); New Orleans Bulletin, 
Mch. 2, 1850. 



THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 83 

Southern Whigs in Congress held a secret meeting and 
appointed C. M. Conrad of Louisiana, Humphrey Marshall 
of Kentucky and Toombs as a committee to exhort the 
President and to tell him that if he persisted in his policy 
his Southern friends would be driven into the opposition.* 
The members of [this committee called upon Taylor sepa- 
rately and used such arguments as they deemed proper in 
strengthening the force of their message. Toombs paid 
his visit on July 3, accompanied by Stephens. 

The National Intelligencer had published that morning a 
report that an armed conflict was imminent between the 
forces of the United States and those of Texas for the posses- 
sion of the New Mexican area in dispute. Stephens took 
oflPense at the tone of an editorial which accompanied this 
article, and on the same day wrote to the editor of the 
Intelligencer a public letter, denying that it was the duty 
of the United States army detachment at Santa Fe to pre- 
vent the extension of Texan jurisdiction over such portion of 
New Mexico as lay east of the Rio Grande; and he declared: 
"The first federal gun that shall be fired against the people 
of Texas, without the authority of law, will be the signal 
for the freemen from the Delaware to the Rio Grande to 
rally to the rescue." f 

Stephens was of course still laboring under the excite- 
ment of this episode when he and Toombs called upon the 
President. Of that visit and of a conversation, apparently 
on the same day, with Preston, the Secretary of War, Ste- 
phens wrote in after years: 

"Taylor died in July, 1850, when all was at sea on the ad- 
justment. A few days before his attack [of illness] I had a 
long and earnest interview with him and urged him to change 
his policy, which was at that time to send troops to Santa 

* J. F. H. Claiborne, Life and Correspondence of John A. Quitman, 
N. Y., i860, II, 32, 33. 

t National Intelligencer, July 4, 1850. 



84 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

Fe, Texas, and take federal occupation of territory against 
the claim of Texas — Seward's game, as I believed. I went 
to see Preston, Toombs with me. Preston was not at home; 
we met him in front of the Treasury building; we had a long 
talk; Toombs said little, that little on my side. I told 
Preston that if troops were ordered to Santa Fe the Presi- 
dent would be impeached. 'Who will impeach him?' asked 
he. 'I will if nobody else does,' I replied. We then turned 
and parted." * 

A rumor of these occurrences reached the newspaper 
correspondents, and one of them, signing himself "Henrico," 
wrote a wretchedly garbled account which was not only 
published by his paper, the Philadelphia Bulletin, but was 
widely reprinted by other journals. This related that 
Toombs and Stephens had gone to Taylor during his illness, 
which began on July 4 and ended fatally on July 9; that they 
had upbraided him for treason to the South and had threat- 
ened him with a vote of censure in Congress for his participa- 
tion in the affair of the Galphin claim. "Henrico" shortly 
afterward corrected his error as to the date, saying that 
the visit to Taylor had been paid on July 3, before the begin- 
ning of Taylor's illness; but the correction was doubtless 
not so widely printed as the original account, Stephens 
issued a public letter on July 13 denying that he and Toombs 
had made any threat in regard to the Galphin affair. Toombs, 
following his usual custom, paid no attention to the canard. 
Along with Stephens, though still more staunchly, Toombs 
was a consistent supporter of the Galphin claim, as will be 
seen in our second chapter following. A threat from him 
to censure Taylor's mild endorsement of the claim would 
have been flagrantly stultifying. To convince anyone 
acquainted with Toombs's character that he was guilty of 
this would require the strongest evidence. In the complete 
absence of supporting testimony the report must be dis- 

* A. H. Stephens, Recollections, M. L. Avery ed., p. 26. 



THE COMPROMISE OF i8so 85 

missed as the crass conjecture of a hostile journalist. The 
Democratic press of the day, however, abetted by the New 
York Tribune, indulged in an unusual degree of sensationalism 
over it, some of them going so far as to charge that Toombs 
and Stephens had stood over the suffering President's bed 
and fiendishly hastened his death by their reproaches and the 
threat of public censure. And even a historian so careful as 
Mr. Rhodes has been led by the intemperate partisan press 
of the time into republishing the original statement without 
questioning its accuracy.* 

Upon Taylor's death a "Northern man with Southern 
principles" acceded to the presidency in the person of 
Millard Fillmore, and the Southern prospect began to 
brighten. The Doty resolution was again taken up in the 
House, but was again obstructed and again laid aside. The 
Northerners had tried repeatedly to facilitate their purpose 
by suspending the rules whereby obstruction was made 
possible, but the South had votes enough to prevent the 
passage of any motion which like this one required a two- 
thirds majority. On August 14, indeed, the House amended 
the rules in a way which rendered obstruction more difficult; 
but even with this revision it was doubtful that the Southern- 
ers could ever be overridden; and the attempt was not made. 
The Senate had already begun to pass in fairly rapid succes- 
sion the several bills into which Clay's original proposal had 
been separated, and the Southerners in the House had at 
last a chance to do something else than obstruct. 

On August 28 when the Senate bill for restricting the 
boundary of Texas and assuming the Texan debt to the 
amount of ten million dollars was pending in the House, 
Mr. Boyd of Kentucky moved to amend by adding to it 
the Senate bill for organizing the territories of Utah and New 
Mexico on the basis of non-intervention with slavery therein. 

* A. C. Cole, The Whig Party in the South (MS.); Rhodes, History of the 
United States, I, 175-177; Baltimore Clipper, July 15, 1850. 



86 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

As a sign of the times, next day during a stormy debate 
Mr. Brooks of New York, a former supporter of the Wilmot 
Proviso, announced to the House: "To settle this terrible 
agitation in this hall and chamber, ... I am willing to 
become a convert to the doctrine of non-intervention — 
and in good faith too. ... I will stand upon the principle 
that the authority of this government shall not be exerted 
to exclude or extend slavery, the principle of compromise 
upon which it was framed." Mr. Boyd withdrew that 
portion of his amendment which related to Utah, leaving 
the New Mexico provision to be voted upon. A vote was 
reached on September 4, when Boyd's amendment was 
rejected by 98 to 106; and this led to the rejection of the 
main bill by 80 to 126. Next day both of these votes 
were reconsidered. Toombs then moved to amend Boyd's 
amendment by adding a provision that no citizen of the 
United States should be deprived of life, liberty or property 
in the said territory except by the judgment of his peers 
and the law of the land; and that the Constitution of the 
United States and such federal laws as should not be locally 
inapplicable, and the common law as it existed in the British 
Colonies of America until July 4, 1776, should be the exclu- 
sive laws upon African slavery, until altered by the proper 
authority. The two clauses of this amendment were voted 
upon separately; the first one was adopted without a divi- 
sion, the second rejected by 64 to 121. When thus amended 
Boyd's amendment was adopted by 106 to 99, but the bill 
was then again rejected by 99 to 107. On the following day, 
however, the vote on the bill was again reconsidered, and 
although a group of Southern extremists still opposed it, the 
bill as amended received 108 ayes on its final passage, in- 
cluding of course that of Toombs, against 97 noes; and was 
thereby adopted. On Sept. 7 the bill for California's ad- 
mission was passed without obstruction by 150 to 56, Toombs 
voting no because of the irregularities in her application. 



THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 87 

Consideration of the Senate bill for the organization of 
Utah on the non-intervention principle followed immedi- 
ately. Mr. Seddon of Virginia and Mr. Fitch of Indiana 
offered pro- and anti-slavery amendments respectively, 
both of which were defeated. Thereupon Mr. Bayley of 
Virginia remarked that it was evident that the majority 
of the House meant to pass the bill in its present form, and 
he hoped that Southerners would offer no further amend- 
ments. Seddon in reply expressed his irreconcilable opposi- 
tion to the bill as it stood, characterizing it as "the last 
of a series of connected outrages on our section and its 
citizens," and appealing to Southern members to resist. 
He said: 

" Let us not weaken the force of our opposition and re- 
pugnance by acquiescence in this the pettiest of the whole. 
Here, indeed, it may avail nothing. From the dominant 
majority here we can expect no redress — not even the 
simplest justice. We speak to sealed ears — to fixed minds. 
But beyond them there is yet a power we may invoke with 
hope. To the sovereignty of the people there may be 
appeal, and there we may find a power to resist wrongs and 
maintain rights. In my humble judgment the honor and 
safety of the Southern people are involved in the issues of 
these measures, and to them, with the confidence which 
their history and their character justify, let us refer, as be- 
comes their Representatives, the determination of the extent 
of the wrong done and ' the mode and measure of redress.' " 

Toombs began to reply to this, when Seddon assailed him 
for abandoning the Southern cause. Toombs then replied 
by showing that the Texan boundary bill which Seddon 
declared an outrage upon the South had been opposed by a 
majority of twelve in the Northern vote and had been 
carried by a majority of twenty-three in the vote of the 
Southern members. As to the merits of the bill, he approved 
the Texan boundary bill as "not only just but generous to 
Texas. She has a technical but not a meritorious title to 



88 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

the country ceded"; and theTexans in Congress had accepted 
the settlement. As to California he said he did not consider 
her admission an aggression upon the South, and had voted 
against it only upon non-sectional grounds. The proposal 
which many Southern members had favored of dividing Cali- 
fornia into two parts, he said, would have resulted only in the 
erection in the near future of two non-slaveholding states in 
California instead of one. He concluded by saying: 

" From the first day of this session to this hour I have 
had but one ultimatum. That was — hostile legislation by 
Congress against our property. That I have been, now 
am, and shall ever be ready to resist. No man is more 
rejoiced than I am that this alternative is not presented to 
me by these bills. What I have conceded in these bills is 
only what the honorable gentleman's friends in the South 
have for the last ten years generally held was not only 
unnecessary but almost treasonable to demand. I have not 
conceded it to them — I have conceded it to the public will, 
to the peace and tranquillity of the Republic, trusting that 
if further events shall prove that those who differed from 
me are wrong, a sense of national justice, purified by the 
fiery ordeal through which we have passed, will indicate 
the right and do justice to my country." * 

The bill was promptly passed by 97 to 85. On September 
12 the Senate bill for the more effective rendition of fugitive 
slaves was taken up and promptly passed by 109 to 75, and 
on September 17 the Senate bill for the abolition of the slave 
trade in the District of Columbia was passed with similar 
expedition by 127 to 47, Toombs not voting. By this was 
concluded, whether for the good or evil fortune of the South, 
the enactment of the great sectional readjustment of 1850. 
The question still remained whether the Southern people 
would accept it as a settlement. After enacting the appro- 
priation bills, Congress adjourned on September 30, and the 
members returned home to debate the question anew before 
their constituents. 

* Congressional Globe, 31st. Cong., ist. sess., pp. 1774, 1775. 



CHAPTER V 
THE GEORGIA PLATFORM 

IT is clear from the foregoing narrative that Toombs was 
a devotee of the Union as well as of Southern rights. 
His labors were indeed as essential in securing the enact- 
ment of the Union-saving Compromise as were those even 
of Clay and Webster. His vociferous obstruction in Decem- 
ber prevented Winthrop and the Provisoists from seizing the 
organization of the House; his indomitable resistance in 
February thwarted the Provisoist majority's efforts to 
shape the legislative programme and gave to the evenly 
balanced Senate its chance to take the lead; his continued 
defiance in June heartened the minority to keep up its fight 
until the death of Taylor enabled Fillmore, a friend of the 
Compromise, to use the patronage to bring the House 
mercenaries into line; and finally his vigorous endorsement 
of the whole group of pending measures in September per- 
suaded wavering Southerners and accomplished the enact- 
ment. If he had followed the opposite course at any stage, 
the adjustment would almost certainly have been defeated. 
Indeed had he desired an issue upon which to proclaim out- 
rage to the South and lead a secession movement, he needed 
only to rest passive in any of the successive crises of the 
session and Congress would with little doubt have furnished 
him with a very substantial grievance upon which to make 
a campaign. The vehemence of his speeches was due partly 
for his fondness for tours de force (critics called him rash in 
speech though sage in counsel) but it was due more largely 
to a deliberate analysis of the situation. Hilliard, whose atti- 



90 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

tude was closely similar to that of Toombs, explained his 
own policy saying that he spoke aggressively in Congress 
in order to be able to speak soothingly at home.* With 
Toombs there was yet another reason. Throughout the 
winter and spring he had believed it barely within human 
possibility to bring the House as then constituted to any 
adjustment which he thought the South ought to accept. 
He therefore intended by his speeches not only, if possible, 
to persuade the North to abandon its aggressions, but also 
to rouse the South into preparation for ultimate recourses 
in the probable event of the North's refusing to yield the 
required modicum of rights to the South. 

When the improbable was achieved, the Compromise 
enacted, it became apparent that a large element of the 
people throughout the Lower South had become so highly 
exercised that they were likely to repudiate the Compromise 
and move for Southern independence. The Toombs group 
of Congressmen promptly resolved that this movement must 
be checked and controlled, particularly in the pivotal state 
of Georgia where the crisis was at the time nearest a cul- 
mination. 

Secessionist spirit had begun to emerge in Georgia, as in 
neighboring states, even before the beginning of the Proviso 
struggle. For instance J. W. H. Underwood, a leading Demo- 
crat of northern Georgia, wrote to Howell Cobb, February 
2, 1844: 

" I am as ardently attached to our Union and institutions 
as any man; but when our Northern brethren, forgetful of 
the spirit of compromise which resulted in the formation of 
our Constitution and regardless of our rights as members 
of this Union, force issues upon us which were intended by 
the framers of our government to be buried and closed for- 
ever, it is time that we should hold them as we hold the rest 
of mankind, 'enemies in war, in peace friends.' I am opposed 
to any temporizing on this question." 

* Congressional Globe, 31st. Cong., ist. sess., p. 485. 



THE GEORGIA PLATFORM 91 

Similar expressions in the next three or four years have 
already been quoted in our preceding chapters. On Febru- 
ary 13, 1849, Hopkins Holsey, the Democratic editor at 
Athens, Ga., wrote Cobb: 

" The Democratic party of the South is taking position in 
favor of bold measures. The tone of the press is conclusive 
and without exception, even in the mountains. . . . The 
Southern people, you are aware, are now more sensitive than 
ever. They are not willing to give up the substance for the 
shadow. They are wrought up, by the late movement in 
Congress, into a greater jealousy than ever of their rights. . . . 
I have but little confidence in the stability of the Union, 
unless the South succumbs entirely to aggression. This 
she may do, but I do not think she will. The struggle will 
be great, but she will recover, although it may be by a small 
majority of the people at first. And now, my dear friend, 
let me say to you that it is the force of the question that is 
sweeping the Democratic ranks at the South. Neither per- 
sonal hatreds or attachments will have any eflFect. Men will 
ally on this question with their most bitter personal enemies, 
and part with their best friends." 

In South Carolina the legislature had already declared 
by a resolution of December 15, 1848, "that the time for 
discussion has passed, and that this General Assembly is 
prepared to cooperate with her sister states in resisting the 
Wilmot Proviso ... at any and all hazard." The develop- 
ments of the ensuing year brought the Georgia legislature 
not only to accept an invitation to send delegates to a South- 
ern convention but also to authorize the Governor in the 
event of the enactment by Congress of either of the pending 
objectionable bills to summon the people to meet by dele- 
gates in convention to consider "the mode and measure of 
redress." The prevailing view which led to this action was 
expressed in the Georgia Senate by the young mountaineer 
Joseph E. Brown, now just entering public life, who was 
destined to reach high authority in the state because of 
his thorough sympathy with the views of the yeomanry 



92 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

and his marked integrity and sagacity. As reported in the 
local press: 

" He said the time had arrived when the South must either 
submit to aggression or resist, regardless of consequences. 
He regarded the Union as one of the noblest structures ever 
built by human hands; but much as he revered it, he would 
rather see it sundered than that the South should be deprived 
of an equal participation in its rights and privileges. It 
was framed in a better and purer age than that in which we 
live, at a time when every state held slaves. Massachusetts 
and others of her neighbors, because their soil and climate 
did not render them profitable to their owners, sold them to 
the South, and now they prate liberally about our iniquity 
in holding the property they sold to us. These Northern 
people to show their aversion to slavery have determined to 
exclude it from territories acquired by the best blood of the 
South. . . . He had a reverence for the Union. To preserve 
it he would yield the territory. But Southern rights could 
not be purchased at that price. Yield that and you will 
be called upon to yield the District of Columbia. You will 
then be told this is a small matter. That forced upon you, 
you must next surrender the arsenals and dock yards. These 
yielded, the internal slave trade will be abolished. By the 
time these are accomplished, states will be organized in the 
new territories, and by the force of numbers the great object 
of all these movements will be consummated — an altera- 
tion of the Constitution and abolition in the states. Under 
these circumstances now was the time to act — to act with 
reference to the future and in such a manner as the conven- 
tion uninstructed by us shall determine." * 

Congressmen in the thick of the fight at Washington 
labored to keep in touch with public opinion at home, with 
a view both to guiding it and to being guided by it. Stephens, 
for example, wrote, February 13, 1850, to James Thomas, a 
leading citizen of Sparta, Ga.: 

" When I look to the future and consider the causes of the 
existing sectional discontent, their extent and nature, I 

* Federal Union, Feb. 5, 1850: report of proceedings in the Georgia senate. 



THE GEORGIA PLATFORM 93 

must confess that I see very little prospect of future peace 
and quiet in the public mind upon this subject. Whether 
a separation of the Union and the organization and establish- 
ment of a Southern Confederacy would give final and ulti- 
mate security to the form of society as it exists with us, I 
am not prepared to say. I have no doubt if we had unity, 
virtue, intelligence and patriotism in all our councils, such 
an experiment might succeed. But unfortunately for our 
country at this time we have if I am not mistaken too much 
demagogism and too little statesmanship. Most of the fight- 
ing resolves of our legislatures I fear are nothing but gasconade, 
put forth by partisan leaders for partisan effects. If our peo- 
ple really mean to fight, if their minds are made up upon this 
alternative, they should say so, and they should make the dec- 
laration in Congress too plain to admit of equivocal readings. 
But if they do not intend to resort to the ultima ratio of all 
nations they should cease in that sort of braggadocio which 
will in end result in their own degradation." 

The response to these soundings was apparently Delphic. 
Jefferson Davis doubtless gathered that his own antagonism 
to the Compromise would be supported by the South, while 
on the other hand Toombs, Stephens and Cobb found reason 
to believe that their programme of belligerent demands for 
moderate Northern concessions as a basis of maintaining 
the Union would be endorsed. In May a meeting of the 
Southern delegation in Congress authorized the issue of an 
address to the Southern people prepared by a committee 
with Toombs as a member, advocating the establishment of 
a newspaper at Washington devoted to the promotion of 
Southern interests and the unification of Southern opinion. 
"The union of the South upon these vital interests," the 
address declared, "is necessary not only for the sake of the 
South, but perhaps for the sake of the Union." * Mean- 
while the congressional asperities continued and the public 
tended more and more to the opinion expressed by Senator 
Hunter of Virginia, that the Clay proposals involved such 

* M. W. Clusky, Political Text-book, Phila., i860, pp. 606-609. 



94 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

great concessions by the South that their adoption would 
promote further aggressions by the overpowering North and 
bring not peace but continued strife.* 

In the early summer attention was diverted in part to the 
widely heralded Nashville Convention, in which delegates 
from the Southern states met in response to a call of the 
Mississippi legislature, framed in accordance with a plan 
devised by Calhoun for the consolidation of Southern opinion 
and the coordination of Southern policies. But the Southern 
Whigs declined to support the project; and when the conven- 
tion assembled such wide divergence of views appeared among 
its members that the unifying of the South upon any decisive 
policy was recognized as impossible. The convention merely 
adopted a demand for the extension of the Missouri Com- 
promise line to the Pacific, together with a long series of very 
mild resolutions, and adjourned to await the action of Con- 
gress upon the questions pending. 

In Georgia the people were looking more to Congress and 
to their state convention in prospect than to the Nashville 
gathering. The condition of affairs in midsummer is indicated 
by a letter of Absalom H. Chappell, a leading Unionist 
Democrat of central Georgia, to Howell Cobb, July lo, 1850: 

"The state of things is such as is filling thousands of the 
best men in Georgia with deep alarm. The Democratic 
party of this section of the state is becoming rapidly demoral- 
ized in reference to the great question of the preservation 
of the Union. The game of the destructives is to use the 
Missouri Compromise principle as a medium of defeating 
all adjustment and then make the most of succeeding 
events, no matter what they may be, to infuriate the South 
and drive her into measures that must end in disunion. . . . 
It is of the very last importance that you should without 
delay throw yourself fully into the breach by an address to 
your constituents. Prepare, I beseech you, and send out at 

* In Senate, July 18, 1850. Congressional Globe Appendix, 31st. Cong., 
1st. sess., p. 382. 



THE GEORGIA PLATFORM 95 

once such an address. ... It will do incalculable good, and 
what is more, prevent incalculable and irremediable evil. 
... If any other Representative or Senator from Georgia, 
Whig or Democrat, can be prevailed on to come out with an 
address to the people in behalf of any course of compromise, 
pacification and adjustment that is not hopeless of being 
passed, he will be rendering the country greater service than 
he has ever before had the opportunity of rendering." 

On July 21 John H. Lumpkin wrote Cobb in similar strain 
from Rome, Ga.: "Wm. L. Mitchell and various other 
prominent individuals I have met are in favor of a dissolu- 
tion of the Union per se (as I understand Uncle Jos. H. 
Lumpkin has written you he is), and newspaper editors have 
become bold enough to insert communications in their 
columns without any mark of disapprobation, openly advo- 
cating an immediate dissolution of the Union." 

Mass-meetings at numerous places in Georgia listened 
with approval to speeches on the infraction of Southern 
rights and the obligation of resistance from Rhett of South 
Carolina, Yancey of Alabama, and Charles J. McDonald 
of Georgia.* 

Governor Towns, in sympathy with the resistance policy, 
only awaited the occurrence of an opportunity to call the 
contemplated Georgia convention. The enactment of the 
California bill, falling within the measures listed for resist- 
ance in the legislature's act of February 8, gave the governor 
the authority he desired; and on September 23 he issued 
a proclamation directing the citizens to elect delegates, 
November 3, to a convention to meet at Milledgeville on 
December 10, vested with unlimited authority. 

Such was the situation into which Toombs, Stephens and 
Cobb plunged as soon as the adjournment of Congress at 
the end of September permitted them to hasten home. No 
one could tell the outcome of the pending decisive contest. 

* J. C. Butler, Historical Record of Macon, Ga., Macon, 1879, p. 194. 



96 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

The three men, in a firm alliance for combining their strength 
in persuading the people to endorse the settlement which 
they had just wrung from the reluctant Congress, began a 
whirlwind campaign on the stump. 

To supplement their speeches Toombs issued on October 
9 a printed address to the people declaring that no act 
injurious to the South had been passed by Congress and 
urging that Georgia and the South stand by the Constitu- 
tion and the laws in good faith until a wrong had been con- 
summated. Admitting that the South had not secured its 
full contention, he said in palliation: "But the fugitive-slave 
law which I demanded was granted. The abolition of slavery 
in the District of Columbia and proscription in the terri- 
tories was defeated, crushed and abandoned. We have 
firmly established great and important principles. The 
South has compromised no right, surrendered no principle, 
and lost not an inch of ground in this great contest. I did 
not hesitate to accept these acts but gave them my ready 
support." He appealed to all men of integrity, intellect 
and courage, regardless of prior political ajHiliations, to come 
to the support of the Constitution and the Union. "With 
no memory of past differences," he concluded, "I am ready 
to unite with any portion or all of my countrymen in defense 
of the republic." * 

On election day the voters went to the polls in unusually 
great numbers throughout the state, and elected a huge 
majority of Unionists as delegates, including Toombs, 
Stephens and Cobb from their respective counties. There- 
upon these leaders set themselves to determine how the 
occasion might best be used for exerting a proper influence 
upon neighboring states and upon coming years. They 
desired to combine in the breasts of the people an ac- 
ceptance of the adjustment accomplished and a resolution 
to repel any further Northern aggressions. To this end 
* P. A. Stovall, Robert Toombs, pp. 83-85. 



THE GEORGIA PLATFORM 97 

they encouraged their ally Charles J. Jenkins to prepare 
and present to the convention in December, as chairman of 
the principal committee, a report concluding with a set of 
resolutions. The latter were adopted by the immense 
majority of 237 to 19, and promptly became celebrated as 
the " Georgia Platform." 

In the report, recent developments regarding the slavery 
issue were reviewed and the conclusion reached that the 
admission of California was the only thing done by Congress 
which the resolutions authorizing the call of this conven- 
tion had declared would be taken by Georgia as a grievance. 
The question was then discussed as to the policy proper in the 
premises: 

" The proposition that, weighed in the scale of interest, the 
preponderance is vastly on the side of non-resistance, is too 
plain for argument. This act being in its nature unsuscep- 
tible of repeal, the only competent measure of resistance is 
secession. This would not repair the loss sustained, viz., 
deprivation of the right to introduce slavery into California. 
But it would subject Georgia, first to the additional loss of all 
she has gained by the scheme of adjustment, e. g., the pro- 
vision for the reclamation of fugitive slaves; and secondly 
it would annihilate forever all the advantages, foreign and 
domestic, derivable from her adherence to the confederacy." 

On the other hand consideration was given to the current 
Northern agitation for the repeal of the new fugitive-slave 
law, and the assertion was made that the repeal or the 
wholesale obstruction of this law, since it would nullify 
the clause in the Constitution which required the main- 
tenance of an efficient rendition system, would thence- 
forward be made a test of the Northern disposition regarding 
the obligations of the Constitution. After further recitals 
and arguments upon other topics, the report concluded with 
the resolutions comprising the "Georgia Platform," which 
was adopted, "to the end that the position of this state 
may be clearly apprehended by her confederates of the 



98 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

South and of the North, and that she may be blameless of 
all future consequences." 

The first of these resolutions was a pledge to abide in the 
Union so long as it should continue to be a safeguard of the 
rights and principles which it had been designed to perpetu- 
ate. The second endorsed the general principle of com- 
promise. The third said that the state of Georgia, though 
not wholly approving the recent congressional compromise, 
"will abide by it as a permanent adjustment of this sectional 
controversy." The fourth declared that Georgia ought to 
and would resist, even to the disruption of the Union as 
a last resort, any future abolition of slavery in the District 
of Columbia, or prohibition of it in the territories of Utah 
and New Mexico, or any suppression of the interstate 
slave-trade, or the repeal or emasculation of the fugitive- 
slave rendition law, or a refusal to admit any territory as a 
state because of the existence of slavery therein. The 
fifth and final resolution repeated the emphasis upon slave 
rendition: "It is the deliberate opinion of this convention 
that upon the faithful execution of the fugitive-slave bill 
depends the preservation of our much loved Union." * 

In the preceding month of November the Nashville Con- 
vention had reassembled in a somewhat irregular manner 
for its adjourned session, and with McDonald of Georgia 
as its president adopted resolutions rejecting the Compro- 
mise and appealing to the Southern states to provide for a 
joint convention clothed with full power to restore the rights 
of the South within the Union if possible, "and if not, to 
provide for their safety and independence." f But the tide 
of public sentiment had already been turned against dis- 
union in Georgia by the Toombs, Stephens and Cobb 
campaign; and the Georgia Platform began promptly in 

* Journal of the Convention; Clusky, Political Text-book, i860, pp. 599, 
600; Stephens, War Between the States, II, 676, 677; Johnston and Browne, 
Life of Stephens, p. 259. t Clusky, Political Text-book, pp. 596-598. 



THE GEORGIA PLATFORM 99 

December to exert a decisive influence upon opinion in 
nearly all the neighboring states. 

The work of the Georgia convention was clearly not the 
result of the efforts of either of the political parties, but of 
a coalition comprised of nearly all the Whigs and a strong 
division of the Democrats led by Howell Cobb and located 
chiefly in the northern counties. The irreconcilables on 
the other hand comprised a majority of the Democrats. It 
appears, then, that each party had in large measure reversed 
its position regarding the rights of the South since the time 
of the Nullification controversy. Yet the contentions of 
the friends and foes of the Georgia Platform in 1850 were 
not radically different. Virtually all Georgians believed 
that the rights of the South had been invaded. Opinion 
differed merely upon the advisability of belligerence under 
the existing circumstances. 

Although the Platform was adopted in the convention by 
an overwhelming majority, it was realized that there existed 
strong popular disapproval of any semblance of a sacrifice 
of Southern rights. The necessity was felt for an organiza- 
tion which would uphold firmly the principles of the 
Compromise. There was therefore held on the night of 
December 12, 1850, between the daily sessions of the con- 
vention, a meeting of the prominent unionist members of 
that body, at which it was resolved that party alignments 
as then existing were illogical and hurtful to the country, 
and should be destroyed. At that meeting a new poHtical 
party was launched, with Toombs, Stephens and Cobb 
responsible for its origin. The name "Constitutional 
Union" was assumed, the Georgia Platform was adopted 
as the basis of the party's policy, and all friends of the Union 
were invited to the support of the movement.* Toombs 

* U. B. Phillips, Georgia and State Rights, pp. 165, 166; A. H. Stephens, 
War Between the States, II, 176; Southern Recorder, Dec. 24, 1850, and Feb. 
24, 1853; Federal Union, Jan. 21, 1851. 



100 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

and Stephens did not return to Washington for the short 
session of Congress until late in December. For most 
of the following year they and Cobb devoted the greater 
part of their attention to the new party's progress, endeavor- 
ing to promote it in other states as well as in Georgia. 

Washington's birthday, 1851, was made the occasion for 
a great constitutional union celebration at Macon, Ga., at 
which Absalom H. Chappell, A. H. Kenan, E. A. Nisbet, 
R. R. Cuyler, Washington Poe, C. B. Cole and A. P. Powers 
made unionist addresses; letters were read from Clay, Cobb, 
Toombs and numerous others who had had to decline invita- 
tions to attend; and a long series of regular and volunteer 
toasts were offered, of which the following are typical: 
"4. A Constitutional Union Party: The only effectual 
organization which can destroy abolitionism at the North 
and disunion at the South. ... 5. The Union Party of 
Georgia: It has blotted out all past party distinctions and 
declared that it will fraternize only with those who occupy 
the broad platform adopted by the Georgia Convention. 
The main test of all candidates should be, are they honest? 
are they capable? are they faithful to the Constitution and 
the Union?"* 

Toombs's letter to the committee for this meeting, dated 
at Washington, D.C., February 15, reads in part as follows: 

"The present government of the United States [i.e. Fill- 
more's administration] is true to its duties and to the laws 
and constitution of the land; it will maintain them with a 
firmness equal to any emergency, with a constancy and 
courage as prolonged as the conflict. 

"The existing political organizations of the North, both 
Whig and Democratic, are wholly unequal to the present 
crisis. Their antecedents are continual stumbling-blocks 
in the path of safety and duty. If either were sound, I 
should not hesitate to advise you to promote its success. 

* Union Celebration in Macon, Georgia, on the anniversary of Washing- 
ton's Birthday, February 22, 1851. (Caption.) 



THE GEORGIA PLATFORM lOI 

But both have degenerated into mere factions, adhering 
together by the common hope of pubHc plunder. Their 
success would benefit nobody but themselves, and would be 
infinitely mischievous to the public weal. The Whigs and 
Democrats of Massachusetts are struggling between Sumner 
and Winthrop; it is a contest in which the friends of the 
country have not the slightest interest. The success of 
the principles of either would be equally fatal to the safety 
and existence of the republic. The Whigs and Democrats 
of New York and Ohio are thoroughly denationalized. Indeed 
there is no non-slaveholding state in which the free-soil 
Whigs do not control the Whig organization, and none in 
which the Democratic free-soilers do not control it, except 
N. Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa. Our 
safety, and the safety of the country, therefore, lies in 
refusing all cooperation with either the Whig or Democratic 
parties of the North, and a thorough union with the sound 
men of both these parties into a united National party. If 
this is impracticable, we ought to stand aloof from both 
and support none but a sound National candidate. 

"Apart from the question of slavery, another great ques- 
tion is rising up before us [to] become a 'fixed fact' in 
American politics. It is . . . sometimes called the higher 
law, in antagonism to our constitutional compact. If the 
first succeeds we have no other safety except in secession; 
if the latter 'liberty and union' may be 'forever one and 
inseparable.' In all these questions it is our true policy to 
stand by those who agree with us — repudiate those who 
differ with us. We are beleaguered by enemies at the 
North and the South. Let us not falter in our duty. The 
constitution and Union is worth the struggle. Who will 
falter in this glorious conflict?" 

An undertone of apprehension is discernible in this letter. 
Toombs was nevertheless resolved to give the Compromise 
a full trial as a means of saving the Union, and to have no 
share in the responsibility should it fail. The opposing view 
was cogently expressed in an editorial of the preceding month 
in the Columbus, Ga., Sentinel: 

"There is a feud between the North and the South which 
may be smothered, but never overcome. They are at issue 



I02 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

upon principles as dear and lasting as life itself. Reason 
as we may, or humbug as we choose, there is no denying the 
fact that the institutions of the South are the cause of this 
sectional controversy, and never until these institutions are 
destroyed, or there is an end to the opposition of the North 
to their existence, can there be any lasting and genuine 
settlement between the parties. We may purchase, as we 
have done in this instance, a temporary exemption from 
wrong by a course of compromise and concession; but we 
had as soon think of extirpating a malady by attacking its 
symptoms as to hope for a final adjustment of our difficulties. 
The evil is, Northern interference with the Southern institu- 
tions, an interference that is legalized by and grows out of 
our political connection with our enemies. . . . Does any 
man of common intelligence at the South entertain the 
remotest idea that our brethren will ever become more 
tolerant of our institutions? Will they ever cease their war 
upon them? . . . Let no Southern man be deceived: a 
momentary quiet has hushed the voice of agitation; but 
there is no peace. There can be none as long as slaveholders 
and abolitionists live under a common government. The 
world is wide enough for us and them; let them go to the 
right and we to the left, for we may no longer dwell together 
as brethren." * 

Toombs might very well have adopted the reasoning of 
this editorial a year or two earlier and have based his policy 
upon it. If the great sectional conflict was indeed irrepres- 
sible (and no man could then nor can any man now nor 
hereafter be sure that it was by human means avoidable) 
wisdom required that the South should hasten the issue. 
The policy of Rhett, Yancey and Quitman was quite possi- 
bly the wisest for the South to adopt. Stephens said in 
after years that he would have advocated extreme measure 
of resistance in 185 1 except that he did not believe the 
people could be made unanimous in its support nor that their 
leaders were sufficiently statesmanlike, f Toombs was doubt- 

* Reprinted in the Charleston Mercury, Jan. 23, 1851. 

t Johnston and Browne, Lije of Alexander H. Stephens, p. 265. 



THE GEORGIA PLATFORM 103 

less influenced by the same thoughts, and furthermore 
he considered himself pledged in good faith to exert all his 
power to make the Compromise a success — in the phrase 
of the period, a finality. By 1851, in fact, even the opponents 
of the Compromise in Georgia recognized that the moment 
had passed when the people might possibly have been 
committed to secession; and when in the spring they 
organized the Southern Rights party to do battle with the 
Constitutional Union party, their spokesmen disavowed 
secessionist purpose. 

In June Cobb and McDonald were nominated as the rival 
candidates for the governorship, and the people were regaled 
with a series of joint debates between them. Stephens was 
kept out of the campaign by illness, but Toombs fairly 
excelled himself, spurred as he was by the prospect of his 
own election to the United States Senate in case the Con- 
stitutional Union party should secure a majority of the 
legislature elected at the same time as the governor. His 
ringing speeches in the campaign were such as to be long 
remembered by the people. His task was to reverse the 
tide which had been stimulated by his own alarmist utter- 
ances in Congress during the preceding year; and for just 
such a task his talents were best suited. When his audiences 
were quiet and thoughtful he demonstrated by solid reason- 
ing that his congressional speeches and his present advocacy 
were parts of a single consistent purpose. But where, as 
at Lexington, Ga., he was met in joint debate by an ad- 
versary who shrewdly rehearsing Toombs's "Hamilcar" 
speech and showing its points of opposition to the argument 
which Toombs had just concluded on the platform, roused 
a furor of endorsement in the audience, Toombs rose to the 
height of his splendid audacity before the mob. He re- 
minded his hearers that their whole duty was to decide 
whether they would approve the Compromise and the 
Georgia Platform or not; and that to discuss whether what 



104 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

he had spoken last year, before these measures were even 
thought of, was right or wrong, was to substitute for a 
transcendently important public question a Httle personal 
one of no concern to them whatever. "If there is anything 
in my Hamilcar speech that cannot be reconciled with the 
measures which I have supported here today with reasons 
which my opponent confesses by his silence he cannot 
answer, I repudiate it. If the gentleman takes up my 
abandoned errors, let him defend them." Colonel Reed 
who related this episode in his Brothers' War, went on to say: 

"I heard much of this day, still famous in all the locality, 
when six years afterwards I settled in Lexington . . . 
Over and over again the union men told how their spirits 
fell, fell, fell as the southern-rights speaker kept on, until 
it looked black and dark around; and then how the sun broke 
out in full splendor at the first sentence of Toombs's reply, 
and the brightness mounted steadily to the end. That 
sentence last quoted is a proverb in that region yet. If in 
a dispute with anybody you try to put him down by quoting 
his former contradictory utterances, he tells you that if you 
take up his abandoned errors you must defend them. The 
interest excited in me by what is told of the foregoing was the 
beginning of my study of Toombs which never at any time 
entirely ceased, and which will doubtless continue as long as 
I live. He has impressed me far more than any other man 
whom I ever knew." * 

The results at the polls in October showed a sweeping 
Unionist victory. Cobb was elected by the very unusual 
majority of 18,000 votes. Toombs himself was reelected to 
Congress and a large majority of Unionists was sent to 
each branch of the assembly. The Southern Rights ticket 
received only the support of the main body of the Democrats 
in central and southern Georgia. The Democrats of the 
mountainous northern counties combined with nearly all 
the Whigs throughout the state for the Unionist victory. 

* J. C. Reed, The Brothers' War, pp. 215-21/. 



THE GEORGIA PLATFORM 105 

Upon the convening of the legislature in November one 
of the first items of business was the election of a Senator 
to succeed John McPherson Berrien, whose term was to 
expire in 1853. Berrien, though still reputed to be the 
ablest constitutional lawyer in Congress, had long passed 
his prime and was poorly adapted for the stress of the 
sectional strife. In chagrin at learning that his course 
in the struggle for the Compromise was disapproved by the 
people of the state, he first declined to be a candidate for 
reelection, and then on the eve of the ballot he informed his 
friends that he would accept if elected. Stephens also, it 
may be inferred, had a desire for the place; and though, 
possibly because of illness, he did not enter the contest, he 
appears to have felt for years afterward a slight grievance 
that he had not been preferred. In the Unionist caucus 
on the senatorship, November 9, Toombs received 73 votes. 
Next day in the joint ballot of the houses 50 votes were 
scattered among numerous aspirants while Toombs received 
the remaining 120 and was elected.* His term was to run 
for six years from March 4, 1853. In the intervening period 
he of course continued his service in the House. 

Meanwhile the secessionist tide had been stemmed or 
was about to be stemmed in the other three states where the 
agitation had been strongest. In Alabama Hilliard in the 
congressional campaign had established to the popular 
satisfaction the expediency of agreeing to the Compromise 
and heavily defeated Yancey's ticket at the polls. f In 
Mississippi Foote's campaign in 1851 decided the issue to 
similar effect by securing his own election over Davis to 
the governorship and the election of a majority of unionists 
to the state convention which had been called. In South 

* Federal Union, Nov. il, 185 1 ; P. A. Stovall, Robert Toombs, pp. 
94-96. 

t G. F. Mellen, "Henry W. Hilliard and W. L. Yancey," in the Sewanee 
Review, XVH, 32-50. 



I06 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

Carolina the legislature in 185 1 had appropriated $350,000 
for putting the state into military preparedness and had 
summoned a convention to take authoritative action. When 
this convention met in the spring of 1852 nearly all of its 
members proved to be advocates of secession, though a 
large majority favored a delay until the cooperation of 
other states could be secured. The convention adopted a 
resolution that the state's grievances would amply justify 
secession, but that " from considerations of expediency only " 
"she forbears the exercise of this manifest right;" whereupon 
Rhett, who was then a Senator from South Carolina, resigned 
his seat in disgust.* The secession movement of the late 
forties and early fifties was definitely at an end. 

No sooner had Cobb's election as governor been accom- 
plished than the Constitutional Unionists in Georgia were 
confronted by the problem of party alignments. They 
had repudiated the names of Whig and Democrat in the hope 
of developing a countr>'-wide Constitutional Union party 
from the Georgia nucleus. But politicians' love of spoils 
blighted this hope. At the opening of Congress in December, 
when a new House was to^be organized, both Whigs and 
Democrats resorted to subterfuge and avoided the question 
of party endorsement of the Compromise. In the election 
of the Speaker Toombs and Stephens were obliged to waste 
their votes among the scattering. In the following months 
Toombs and Stephens, assisted by Foote in the Senate, 
labored for the promotion of their policy, but with no avail. 

Before the spring of 1852 when the problem of alignment 
for the presidential campaign loomed large, the Southern 
Rights party in Georgia reverted to its Democratic alle- 
giance and began to assert that such Democrats as had joined 
the Constitutional Union organization were bolters who must 
serve a probation in humility before they might regain full 

* Journal of the Convention; Federal Union, May 18, 1852, reprinting 
documents from South Carolinian. 



THE GEORGIA PLATFORM 107 

Democratic fellowship. As to the Whig party, the Con- 
stitutional Unionists would find no opposition to their 
return to fellowship; but the party at large had become 
so weakened, so largely controlled by its free-soil wing, 
and so nearly disrupted, that it offered little attraction to 
Southerners. But the Constitutional Unionists would 
clearly have no chance for success with an independent 
presidential ticket; and should they hold aloof from the 
Whig and Democratic conventions they would lose all 
opportunity for influencing the platforms and nominations. 
The Democratic branch of the Constitutional Unionists 
tried for some weeks to persuade the whole Constitutional 
Union organization to join in sending a delegation to the 
Democratic convention at Baltimore; but this would be 
merely to pull Cobb's chestnuts out of the fire for him, and 
Toombs and Stephens declined. W. H. Hull of Athens, 
Ga., described the situation from the Cobb group's point 
of view in a letter to Cobb, February 14, 1852: 

"The old Whig feeling is stronger here than anywhere I 
know. We have had to keep every Democrat in the back- 
ground heretofore; and I have no hope of bringing them into 
the Baltimore movement unless there is a general acquies- 
cence elsewhere. There is at present a very strong feeling 
here against it, and I believe there will be a break up when- 
ever it is broached. Foster had a letter from Stephens 
which he read us. Stephens is dead out against the whole 
movement. I do not know anything about Toombs; but 
if he is going with us he ought to come out and say so very 
soon. If he is with Stephens it is useless to talk about 
keeping any considerable portion of our Whig strength. 
The question will then arise, 'Where are we to go?' I am 
now satisfied from the course things are taking that a Union 
party (which I have fondly hoped would be organized) is 
out of the question. We cannot become Whigs — that is 
absurd — then we must be Democrats. If the Whigs would 
go \V\t\\ us and be Democrats, it would all be well. We would 
keep up our Union organization and could govern the policy 
of Georgia and act in full fellowship with the national 



io8 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

Democracy. But I suppose the Whigs will break off. 
Then I say we must fall back on the Democratic line, and 
of course act with those who are with us. If this be sound, 
then why have two delegations to Baltimore? Why weaken 
the Democratic party by divisions and strife, and give 
over the state to the Whigs? In plain terms — if we are 
to be Democrats, why not be Democrats, and let past 
quarrels be forgotten?" 

On March 5 E. W. Chastain as the spokesman of the Cobb 
element in Congress read a speech in the House claiming 
regular Democratic standing for the Union Democrats of 
Georgia and pledging them to send delegates to the national 
Democratic convention and abide by its actions.* This was 
taken to indicate a split of Cobb from Toombs and Stephens.f 
The rift was not completed however for several months. 
Neither the Cobb following, nicknamed Tugalo Democrats 
from their location in north-eastern Georgia where the 
Tugalo river is the boundary of the state, nor the Whigs 
were able to end their indecision in the campaign until late 
in the summer. A convention of Southern Rights men, 
claiming to represent the whole of the regular Democracy 
in Georgia, met at Milledgeville on March 31 and appointed 
delegates to Baltimore. On April 22 and 23 a convention 
of the Constitutional Union party at the same place gave 
occasion for a stormy debate among its members over a 
proposal to send delegates on behalf of that party to the 
same Baltimore Democratic convention. James Jackson 
and A. H. Kenan supported this proposal, which was opposed 
by Thomas W. Thomas, Charles J. Jenkins and others. | 
The convention adjourned after adopting a noncommittal 
resolution, whereupon the Tugalo wing appointed a delega- 
tion to Baltimore on its own behalf. Shortly afterward 
came news of the disruption of the congressional caucus of 

* Congressional Globe Appendix ^id. Cong., ist. sess., pp. 255-258. 
t Federal Union, March 16, 1852. 
X Federal Union, April 27, 1852. 



THE GEORGIA PLATFORM 109 

the Whigs over a "finaHty resolution" proposed by the 
Southerners and rejected by the Northern majority. The 
nomination by the Whig national convention of Scott, 
the candidate of the anti-slavery wing, now seemed almost 
inevitable. As a forlorn hope for perpetuating the national 
Whig party some of the old-line Whigs held a small con- 
vention at Milledgeville on June 7 and appointed a delega- 
tion to the general Whig convention with instructions to 
support Fillmore. In this movement Toombs and Stephens 
were not consulted. In fact they were then disposed to 
consider that the Whig machinery was controlled by the 
anti-slavery wing beyond the hope of redemption, and 
preferred Scott's nomination because of the prospect of his 
easy defeat.* At the Baltimore Democratic convention at 
the beginning of June the Tugalo and Southern Rights 
delegations were both admitted as a joint representation from 
Georgia. The friends of Cass, Buchanan and Douglas each 
blocking the hopes of the others, the convention nominated 
Franklin Pierce, another "Northern man with Southern 
principles," with William R. King of Alabama as a running 
mate; and it adopted a strong "finality" plank in its plat- 
form. The Southern Rights delegates then invited the 
Tugaloes to unite with them in a joint address calling a 
great ratification meeting in Georgia; but the latter held 
aloof with a view to preserving their alliance with the Union 
Whigs and in the hope that if Scott should be nominated 
without a platform the Whigs of Georgia would join in an 
unanimous endorsement of Pierce. f The Southern Rights 
Democrats lost no time in nominating an electoral ticket from 
among their own membership. The Whig convention, 
meeting at Baltimore at the middle of June, nominated 
Scott as was anticipated; but it also adopted an endorse- 

* Letter of Toombs to Howell Cobb, May 27, 1852. 
t Letter of James Jackson, Washington, D. C, June 8, 1852, to Howell 
Cobb. 



no THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

ment of the Compromise in its platform. Thereupon a 
movement among the Georgia Whigs, led by Senator Dawson, 
brought forth an electoral ticket on Scott's behalf, while 
Toombs and Stephens after further indecision announced 
that they would support neither of the nominations but 
favored a separate ticket with Daniel Webster at its head. 
The Tugaloes thus faced the prospect of being left without 
either Whig or Democratic allies. In the hope of avoiding 
this they summoned a convention of the nearly defunct 
Constitutional Union party to meet at Milledgeville, July 
15. When it assembled the Tugaloes comprised a majority 
of its membership; but when they tried to force through a 
resolution for the nomination of a Pierce ticket, the Whig 
delegates bolted. The Tugalo rump then sadly nominated 
an independent ticket of Pierce electors.* In August the 
executive committee of the Constitutional Union party 
announced that party's dissolution. The Scott and Webster 
Whigs thereupon held negotiations looking to a fusion, but 
without success;! and in September a similar negotiation 
between the two branches of the Democrats met with a 
similar failure. Just before election day the news came of 
Webster's death; nevertheless the ticket which had been 
nominated to vote for him as President and Jenkins of 
Georgia as Vice-President received 5289 votes in Georgia. 
Of the remaining votes, the "regular" electors for Pierce 
received 33,843 and were elected; the Scott ticket 15,789; 
the Tugalo ticket 5733; and a ticket of Southern-rights 
extremists pledged to vote for Troup and Quitman 
received 119. 

The complications in this campaign led Toombs to reflect 
deeply during a period of illness from rheumatism in the 
spring and early summer and to deliver in the House on July 
3, 1852, a speech which, like those for which Edmund Burke 

* Federal Union, July 20, 1852. 
t Federal Union, August 24, 1852. 



THE GEORGIA PLATFORM lii 

is famous, proclaimed his political philosophy as well as his 
views on the existing situation. After fifteen years of strife, 
he said, his constituents desired security and repose, and 
they intended to get them if it were possible by any action of 
theirs in the pending presidential campaign. "In con- 
formity with these views of a local though not a sectional 
organization," numerous Senators and Congressmen had 
declared in the previous session of Congress that they would 
support no man for President who was not known to be in 
favor of the Compromise of 1850. "I approved of that 
pledge, and I intend to adhere to it also with fidelity. It is 
the key, sir, to my present position and to my future action 
with reference to this presidential campaign.'* He then 
discussed the history and character of national party con- 
ventions. He showed that they were an innovation origi- 
nating in the Van Buren campaign of 1836, and that their 
machinery had been adopted with some reluctance by the 
people. Praising the spontaneous methods of nomination 
which had prevailed from Washington's time to Jackson's, 
he lamented the latter-day mechanism as a useless and harm- 
ful incubus. That early system, said he, had promoted the 
general welfare, but it was ill suited to the purposes of such 
men as prefer their own to the public interest. These men 
had devised national conventions, invoking the power of 
association in order to subjugate individual opinion. The 
earlier system had led to the choice of the Presidents from 
Washington to Jackson, the latter one had elected Van 
Buren, Harrison, Polk, and Taylor. "Look upon this 
picture and upon that." Toombs continued: 

"These conventions, although not elected by the people, 
nor recognized by them, not responsible to them, yet by 
reason of the unresisted exercise of the right to nominate the 
Executive of this nation, have already become a real power in 
the state, and exercise a dangerous control over the legislative 
body. I have seen, during this session of Congress, the 



112 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

members of a great and triumphant party, holding a majority 
of fifty in this House, coming here through constitutional 
and legal election, with the right to speak for their con- 
stituents on all questions affecting their political welfare, 
succumb to these organizations, and say, 'We do not choose 
to declare the principles by which our own party shall be 
governed, because it would be usurping the rights of the 
national convention/ They have ignored their own powers 
and abandoned their own duty. They are false to a high trust, 
and sanction a usurpation whenever they utter such senti- 
ments. . . The reason is obvious; they are sent here by and 
through these conventions, and not by the people; they do 
but obey their masters. This system has never produced and 
can never produce statesmen. . . . They have no need of 
such men. Their work requires another description of work- 
men; and he is not wise, he does not truly appreciate the 
best interests of his country, who does not put his foot upon 
them now and forever. . . . 

" Party success being the life-blood of these organizations, 
they must and will, whenever it is necessary, sacrifice both 
men and principles to its attainment. . . . Success demands 
that all factions of the coalition shall be pacified, the god of 
party harmony will accept none but noble victims — thus 
great public services become barriers instead of passports 
to public honors. ... A moment's examination into the 
discordant materials which compose these conventions will 
demonstrate their unfitness to maintain principles of any 
sort. They neither develop new truths nor correct old 
errors. They usually announce with pompous certainty, 
political axioms which nobody denies, and mystify with 
cunningly-contrived phrases controverted points of public 
policy. . . . They are therefore coalitions 'without prin- 
ciples and without policy, held together by the cohesive 
properties of the public plunder.' Thus constituted they can 
pull down but cannot build up systems. . . . They can com- 
bine for mischief, but not for good. . . . Each coalition in 
turn has answered the needs of its creation. The spoils have 
not only been regularly distributed, but have been greatly 
augmented to meet the increasing demand. The coalition 
gets an almoner of public wealth to political mendicants; 
the people get the privilege of replenishing the waste." 



THE GEORGIA PLATFORM 113 

Toombs then turned to the affairs of the current cam- 
paign. The Democrats, he said, after part of them had 
followed Van Buren into the Free-soil camp and another 
portion had essayed disunion at the Nashville convention, 
were now again united. 

"The condition of success was, that Birnam wood should 
be brought to Dunsinane — this moral miracle must be per- 
formed. It was done. The huge magnet of patronage was 
waved over the disaffected regions, and by its power of 
attraction Buffalo and Nashville were brought into council 
together at Baltimore. Free-soilers and Hunkers, Seces- 
sionists and Union men. Compromise and anti-Compromise 
men — all shades of opinion gathered together under 
the power of Democrats to select a candidate for the 
Presidency. The result of their labors is better than could 
have been fairly expected. It is true they threw over- 
board all those statesmen to whom public expectation and 
the public mind had been directed, and selected a candi- 
date of their own; but the candidate selected is a fair 
exponent of the compromise element of the convention 
. . . [and] the convention did, fully and fairly, indorse 
and pledge themselves to abide by and adhere to the adjust- 
ment measures. . . . Therefore the requisition of the Union 
party of Georgia is fully complied with, and these candidates 
are open to the support of members of that party, without 
any surrender of its principles. 

"It is deeply to be regretted that the same result did not 
happen in the Whig convention. There were but two grand 
divisions in that body — the friends and enemies of the 
Compromise measures. The former were divided between 
Mr. Fillmore and Mr. Webster, and the latter concentrated on 
General Scott. The result of their labors was that the 
Compromise was adopted and General Scott was nominated. 
The Free-soil Whigs of the North have complete control of 
the Whig organization in all of the non-slaveholding states, 
and Scott's success will be their triumph, and a triumph 
fatal to the principles of the Union Whigs, both North and 
South. The Whigs who supported General Scott were the 
men who had been most active by speech and pen from the 
beginning of this excitement in promoting sectional strife 



114 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

and discord. . . , While the Compromise resolution of the 
Whig party is all I desired, and the other principles are in the 
main sound and republican, I have seen nothing in the past 
history of the men who offer them to me, to afford me any 
reasonable security that these principles would be honestly 
maintained. . . . But what does General Scott say? ... 'I 
accept the nomination with the resolutions annexed.' I 
take it cum onere. [Laughter.] There is not a single line 
in the whole letter which expresses his approval of the Com- 
promise, or commits him to its faithful maintenance. . . . 

"The reluctant members of the convention are told, 'You 
went to Baltimore and you are bound by the action of the 
convention.' But I wish to show them that this is not a 
sound principle of party action, and that you have the right 
to demand of your candidates to stand up to general rules of 
honor and good faith. Whenever parties declare their prin- 
ciples, they have a right to have a candidate to carry them 
out. They have a right to know whether the candidate 
approves of those principles or not. If he says he will not, 
then nobody is bound by the nomination. . . . General 
Scott has not done it. He has not declared his approbation 
of these principles in any part of his letter, but on the con- 
trary he has declared that principles shall make no difference, 
when it comes to the important business of becoming the 
almoner of fifty millions of dollars of the public money. 
. . . Under these circumstances he can never receive my sup- 
port. Let the Compromise men everywhere — Union Whigs 
in the North and the South — rally once more in support 
of their principles. Let them make an open and manly 
resistance to the election of General Scott; use all honor- 
able ways and means to defeat him; if we succeed w^e shall 
have 'conquered a peace,' a lasting enduring peace; and 
whatever may be the result, we shall have done our duty to 
ourselves, our principles and our country." * 

Aside from this speech on the vices of national conventions 
and the vexations of the Scott-Pierce campaign, Toombs 
confined his activities in the House during these last two 
years of his membership strictly to non-sectional and non- 
partisan business, chiefly concerning himself as usual with 

* Congressional Globe Appendix, 32d. Cong., ist. sess., pp. 816-820. 



THE GEORGIA PLATFORM I15 

promoting frugality and responsibility in public finance. 
An utterance on March 2, 1853, just at the close of his 
service in that chamber is characteristic: "I now move 
to appoint another committee of conference. ... I will 
say to gentlemen that all this terror of driving the incoming 
administration to calling an extra session of Congress is 
utterly erroneous. We ought to have sound legislation, and 
I believe when necessary to accomplish that object, an 
extra session is legitimate and proper. Sir, I will give 
millions for proper legislation but not one cent for jobs." 



CHAPTER VI 

A SENATOR IN THE FIFTIES 

WHEN at the beginning of 1854 Douglas introduced 
his fateful Kansas-Nebraska bill, no member of 
the Senate, with two or three insignificant exceptions, had 
seen as much as ten years of senatorial service. Calhoun, 
Webster, Benton, and Berrien, sobered by decades of experi- 
ence, had guided the Senate in the crisis of 1850, but had 
now been removed by death or defeat. The direction of 
the Senate and of the whole Congress was passing into the 
hands of the men with whom Toombs had begun service in 
the Lower House in 1845, together with recruits equipped 
similarly with great vigor, resolution and shrewdness, and 
little poise or breadth of vieW. Seward, Chase and Wade 
among the anti-slavery leaders, Douglas and Cass who were 
the most prominent "Northern men with Southern prin- 
ciples," together with Benjamin and Slidell of the South, 
were spoilsmen full of expedients; and Sumner on one side 
and Mason on the other were stubborn impracticables. 
Hunter who was exceptional in his broad-mindedness was 
exceptional also in the timidity which diminished his influ- 
ence; and Bell, the lonely pacifist, was usually too querulous 
to be forceful. These, together with Toombs, and with 
Jefferson Davis added in 1857, were the principal figures in 
the Senate during the remainder of the ante-bellum period. 
It was not a personnel calculated to solve problems magis- 
terially nor to secure peace and prosperity to the country. 

Toombs entered the Senate with powers matured, reputa- 
tion established, purposes fixed and ambition satisfied. He 



A SENATOR IN THE FIFTIES 117 

was, and was known to be, an uncompromising foe of patron- 
age methods and all other means for using government 
resources for party advantage, a severe critic of party con- 
ventions, caucus irresponsibility and committee secresy, 
a perpetually alert guardian of the public treasury, a caustic 
censor of those who participated in public squanderings, an 
enthusiastic devotee of justice, and an ardent champion 
of Southern rights in all crises threatening their infringement. 
Furthermore, he was known by his own assertion to hold 
state allegiance superior to federal allegiance in its obliga- 
tion upon himself, and to be an advocate of secession in last 
resort. His steady policy in House and Senate was such as 
to make him unavailable for presidential or cabinet office 
in a regime of machine politics; and he was on record as 
desiring no administrative appointment at any time. With 
his industry, his talents and his patriotism, Toombs was 
prepared to be a steady-going wheel-horse in the senatorial 
routine in quiet times, but ready to serve as a fiery charger 
in time of battle. His preference was for the former capacity 
and he reverted to it between each of the crises, and indeed 
never completely departed from it even in the height of 
sectional conflicts. 

Belated in reaching Washington for his first session in 
the Senate, Toombs took his seat on January 23, 1854. On 
January 4 Douglas had presented his epoch-making report 
and bill for the organization of the territory of Nebraska, pro- 
posing that the question of slavery should be left for the 
settlers to determine. Twelve days later Dixon of Kentucky 
had moved to amend the bill by adding a provision expressly 
repealing the Missouri Compromise act of 1820 so far as it 
prohibited slavery in any of the territories of the United 
States. If an assertion by Seward reported by Montgomery 
Blair in after years be true, Dixon in offering his amendment 
was prompted by Seward, whose ulterior purpose could only 
have been the creation of an all-embracing anti-slavery 



Il8 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

party at the North.* On January 23 Douglas brought in 
from his committee on the territories a new bill as a sub- 
w^ stitute, dividing the Nebraska region into two territories, 
Kansas and Nebraska, and declaring that the eighth section 
of the Missouri Compromise act which had prohibited slavery 
in the territory of the Louisiana purchase above 36° 30', 
being contrary to and having been superseded by the prin- 
ciples of the legislation of 1850, was now void. 

It was on this day that Toombs arrived. On the same 
day Chase, Sumner and others sent to press in the anti- 
slavery newspapers an elaborate address to the people of 
the United States denouncing the proposed legislation "as 
a gross violation of a sacred pledge; as a criminal betrayal 
of precious rights; as part and parcel of an atrocious plot 
to exclude from a vast unoccupied region immigrants from 
the Old World and free laborers from our own states, and 
convert it into a dreary region of despotism, inhabited by 
masters and slaves." f Nevertheless on the following day, 
before the news of the address reached the Senate, Chase 
and Sumner requested and obtained the postponement of 
discussion for a week on the ground that Senators needed 
time to study the question. On January 30 Douglas 
reopened the debate by denouncing the arguments of this 
address and the bad faith of its authors. Chase replied 
with vigor, declaring that in his opinion the Missouri Com- 
promise pledge was sacred and absolutely binding. Wade 
followed on February 6 in similar strain, and together with 
Chase charged falsely that the bill was the product of a con- 
spiracy between the Douglas group and the Southerners. 
The debate then became general. 

Toombs had already put on record in Georgia his opinion 
that the restrictions in the Missouri act had been an unwise 

* J. W. Burgess, The Middle Period, pp. 387, 388. 
t The text is printed in the Congressional Globe, 33d. Cong., ist. sess., 
pp. 281, 282. 



A SENATOR IN THE FIFTIES 119 

concession on the part of the South. In the address to the 
people of Georgia which he had pubhshed in October, 1850, 
in support of the Compromise of that year, he had con- 
gratulated the people upon "having recovered the principle 
unwisely surrendered in 1820"; and continuing on the 
subject of that enactment had written: "The struggle was 
violent and protracted; the republic was shaken to its founda- 
tions; and wise and good and patriotic men believed its 
hour of dissolution had come. In an evil hour the South 
bought this clear, plain and palpable right for Missouri 
only at a great price, a price that ought not to have been 
paid, a price worth more to her than the Union. Instead 
of striking from the limbs of her young sister with the sword 
the fetters which the North sought unjustly to impose upon 
them, the South ransomed her by allowing slavery to be 
prohibited in all that part of Louisiana territory lying north 
of the parallel 36° 30' north latitude and west of Missouri. 
This great principle, thus compromised away in 1820, has 
been rescued, re-established and firmly planted in our politi- 
cal system by the recent action of Congress." In writing 
this, however, Toombs had no further purpose than to 
bespeak Southern approval for the legislation of 1850. 
Instead of urging the repeal of the restriction of 1820, he 
asked that South and North should let sleeping dogs lie. 
When studying problems in 1853 and contemplating a 
prospective career for himself in the Senate, he reckoned as 
usual upon devoting himself to non-sectional business to 
the utmost that circumstances would permit. He thought 
the adjustment of 1850 was adequate, and though disquieted 
by Northern interferences with fugitive-slave rendition, he 
was little disposed to reopen the strife over the general 
slavery issue. Rumor had it in 1854 and afterward that 
Toombs had led Douglas into proposing the Kansas bill.* 
But in fact he knew nothing of Douglas's plan until after 
* Rhodes, History of the United States, I, 431, 432. 



120 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

the bill had been introduced; and even after reaching Wash- 
ington he withheld his support until it became unques- 
tionable that all the Democratic leaders but himself, and the 
whole Southern Democratic rank and file, were thoroughly- 
committed to the strife whether he gave aid or not. Colonel 
John C. Reed, who for many years during Toombs's life 
took notes of his conversations with a Boswellian purpose, 
wrote of Toombs in this connection: "He always declared 
in private conversation after the war that the Democratic 
party was ripened and committed by Douglas and his co- 
workers to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise while he 
was kept away from Washington by necessary attention to 
the interests of a widowed sister, otherwise with his com- 
manding position at the time, he would have crushed the 
scheme at its first proposal. When he returned to his public 
duties, to his amazement he found every prominent member 
of the party was irrevocably for the repeal, and he could 
do nothing but embrace the inevitable." * 

Though Toombs attended a caucus of the friends of the 
bill on February 3 and endorsed it in a letter to his friend 
W. W. Burwell of Baltimore the same day,t he did not enter 
the debate until a month after taking his seat. Then on 
February 23 he quoted the extract above given from his 
own address of 1850, and proceeded in an elaborate speech 
to declare his adhesion to Douglas's proposals. His partisan- 
ship could not be half-hearted. He declared the bill to em- 
body a just solution of the territorial problem, far preferable 
to the previous temporary expedients. Defending its good 
faith, he showed that that had not been questioned except 
by those who openly trampled the laws of 1850 under foot 
and denied the binding effect of the supreme compact, the 
Federal Constitution — men who, instead of being nationalists 
as they claimed, flourished only upon sectional discord and 

* The Brothers' War, p. 262. 

t Original preserved in the Library of Congress. 



A SENATOR IN THE FIFTIES I2I 

valued their own dogmas more highly than the preservation 
of the Union. He showed that the enactment of 1820, far 
from being a Northern concession or a sacred sectional com- 
pact, had been hit upon as a mere emergency expedient and 
had received the votes of but a minority of the Northern 
Senators and Representatives. He praised the Douglas 
plan of leaving institutions to be determined by the citizens 
as an essential requirement of American life and of the Con- 
stitution, declaring that the bill was primarily a return to 
sound fundamental principles and but secondarily a magnani- 
mous concession to the South.* 

In the course of this speech Toombs proclaimed that 
"so far from its being true that the Constitution localized 
slavery, it nationalized it." His jurisprudence here was 
endorsed in futile fashion three years later by the Supreme 
Court in the Dred Scott case. He declared incidentally 
that "Justice is the highest expediency, the supreme wisdom." 
This maxim is approved by many philosophers; but his 
application of it in support of the Douglas bill was pecul- 
iarly inappropriate, as was demonstrated within the few years 
following. 

Bell on March 3 delivered against the bill the greatest 
speech of his life, questioning its constitutionality, declaring 
that its enactment would vastly increase the anti-slavery 
sentiment at the North, and denying that slavery could 
practicably be extended into the territories concerned. But 
nearly all the Southerners as well as the Douglas group were 
resolute in their policy, and the bill passed the Senate on 
March 4 by 34 votes to 14. Before a vote was reached in the 
House it became evident that a furor of opposition to it 
was developing in the North; but by adroit parliamentary 
tactics on the part of Stephens it was forced through the 
House by a vote of 113 to 100 on May 22, and the President 
signed the act, May 30. 

* Congressional Globe Appendix, 33d. Cong., ist. sess., pp. 347 fF. 



122 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

The fallacy of the measure was that it referred to the 
settlers who might enter a then vacant territory the deter- 
mination of an issue in which they would normally have 
little interest but which was of extreme concern to the 
country at large. It accordingly invited pro- and anti-slavery 
men every^vhere to give artificial stimulation to men of their 
views to hurry into the Kansas territory to do battle by 
voting and otherwise for the respective causes in which they 
were enlisted. The act promptly aroused a bitter discussion 
in the sectional presses, and it shortly gave occasion for 
sectional rivalry in colonizing voters in Kansas, followed by 
a bitter wrangle in Congress and the newspapers as to the 
legitimacy of the methods used by either side. 

Had the colonization of Kansas been a normal, spontaneous 
movement of people in search of better economic opportuni- 
ties the North would have had the advantage. Its popula- 
tion was constantly swelled by European immigration, 
whereas the South, offering comparatively small attraction 
to incoming wage-workers or small farmers, had well-nigh 
exhausted its colonizing strength by furnishing settlers for 
Missouri, Arkansas and Texas. Moreover, the Kansas 
climate was not conducive to colonization by men with 
plantation gangs, since it was unsuited to the cultivation of 
the Southern staple crops. When the issue took the form of 
promoting and financing an abnormal rush of voters and 
fighters into the territory, the South was again and more 
decisively at a disadvantage. The abolitionists and Free- 
soilers had societies ready-organized with large funds at 
command, and in their communities a large supply of float- 
ing capital was available for any emergency of the popular 
cause, whereas the Southern people were very slightly organ- 
ized and, as usual, short of cash. The one advantage pos- 
sessed by the pro-slavery side was dangerous to the cause: the 
proximity of Missouri and the willingness of the pro-slavery 
Missourians to invade Kansas on election days and vie with 



A SENATOR IN THE FIFTIES 123 

the irresponsible element of the anti-slavery party in stuffing 
the ballot boxes. When the Free-soilers denounced this 
practice, the reply followed that the Emigrant Aid Com- 
pany of New England had prompted it by its illegitimate 
colonization of voters. 

A field inquiry by the present writer among the people on 
both sides of the Missouri-Kansas border has convinced him 
that there was a much more even distribution of virtue 
and villainy between the respective factions than the his- 
torians have generally described. The crusading spirit, 
whether pro- or anti-slaver}^, was shared by the just and the 
unjust; and agencies for colonizing voters, North and South, 
enlisted emigrants in the stress of the times with little 
regard for their personal qualities. There were pure-minded 
zealots and there were outright desperadoes mingled with 
the more normal partisans of each side. Among the "border 
ruffians" of Missouri, for example, who invaded Kansas on 
election days, there were many men impelled by an emo- 
tional exaltation not unlike that which prompted self-styled 
friends of the negro to despise and defeat the fugitive-slave 
rendition law in Ohio and Massachusetts. Others in the 
Missouri bands of course went in dogged anger; while 
youths joined the junkets in the same holiday spirit of adven- 
ture which led thousands a few years later to join the great 
armies in Virginia. The conditions in Kansas led quickly 
to guerilla warfare, in which both factions were about equally 
active and equally responsible. The anti-slavery editors, 
preachers and politicians promptly worked up the Kansas 
news for increasing the Northern agitation. Most of the 
pro-slavery spokesmen on the other hand regarded the strife 
in the territory as the natural result of Emigrant Aid Com- 
pany's activities, and viewed the distortion of the news as 
merely a fresh instance of Yankee hj'pocrisy; and they 
declined to enter a rivalry in screaming. 

In Congress the issue which the friends of the Douglas 



124 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

bill supposed they had settled by its enactment in 1854 
became rife again within a year and a half. In reply mainly 
to a speech by Mr. Hale of New Hampshire who had now 
reentered the Senate, Toombs expressed in a speech of 
February 28, 1856, his policy in view of the news of disturb- 
ances in Kansas: 

"I intend, to the utmost verge of the law, to sustain the 
supremacy of law in that territory. I will maintain its 
peace at every cost. If traitors seek to disturb the peace 
of the country, I desire that it shall be no sectional contest 
— I do not see the end of that. I prefer that the conflict 
shall be between the Federal Government and the lawless. 
I can see the end of that. The law will triumph and the 
evil stop. . . . The Senator from New Hampshire . . . 
may want a sectional contest; he cannot get it. . . . We 
who passed this Kansas bill . . . intend to maintain its prin- 
ciples. . . . We intend that the actual, bona fide settlers of 
Kansas shall be protected in the full exercise of all the rights 
of freemen; that unawed and uncontrolled, they shall freely 
and of their own will legislate for themselves to every extent 
allowed by the Constitution while they have a territorial 
government; and when they shall be in condition to come 
into the Union, and may desire it, that they shall come into the 
Union with whatever republican constitution they may pre- 
fer and adopt for themselves; that in the exercise of these 
rights they shall be protected against insurrection from 
within and invasion from without. The rights are accorded 
to them without reference to the result, and will be main- 
tained, in my opinion, by the North and the South. I 
stood upon this ground at the passage of the bill; I shall 
maintain it with fidelity and honor to the last extremity. 
The Senator from New Hampshire, seeming unable to com- 
prehend the principles of the Kansas bill, attempts to show 
that in the opinion of many of its supporters the territory 
would be a free state under its action. That opinion was 
certainly held by many of them, and is now held by many 
of them. Though I expressed no opinion on the subject, I 
thought then and think now that such would most probably 
be its future destiny, though the friends of that measure, 
both from the North and the South, placed their support of 



A SENATOR IN THE FIFTIES 125 

it upon no such basis. They supported the bill without 
reference to the result." * 

To carry out the purpose thus described, Toombs matured 
a plan which he presented to the Senate on June 24 in the 
form of a bill. This provided that under the superintendence 
of a presidentially-appointed commission to prevent fraud 
and intimidation a census should be taken in Kansas; that 
all white males twenty-one years old who were bona fide 
residents, found by the census takers, should be registered as 
voters; that these voters should in the coming November elect 
delegates to a constitutional convention, and that Congress 
should admit Kansas as a state promptly with whatever 
constitution, republican in form, that convention might 
adopt. In a speech on June 23, giving notice of his inten- 
tion to introduce the bill, Toombs showed its superiority, 
from the points of view of all men but factionists, over the 
numerous competing proposals on Kansas already before 
the Senate. He invited assistance from all quarters in per- 
fecting the bill so as to protect the integrity of the ballot 
to the fullest extent, to prevent intimidation as well as fraud, 
and in short to guarantee, regardless of sectional effect, 
that the resulting constitution should be the true expression 
of the will of the community. The only essential objection 
to which the bill was open, he said, was that Kansas had not 
yet a population large enough to entitle her to statehood in 
the ordinary routine; but this was only a question of expedi- 
ency, and he considered that the need of quieting the discord 
throughout the country outweighed that objection. He con- 
cluded by saying: "Having advocated it in good faith, as 
sound and good and just, without reference to its result, I 
offer to the Senate a measure which will test the question 
fairly and put it to rest, leaving to professional agitators, 
and those whose business is to mislead and delude the people 

* Congressional Globe Appendix, 34th. Cong., ist. sess., pp. 115-118. 



126 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

and madden their passions with false stories of wrongs 
and outrages, not one solitary inch of ground on which to 
stand."* 

Toombs's purpose was obviously sincere.f The committee 
on territories accepted the bill, and on July 2 the Senate 
brought the question to a vote. The motive of Toombs in 
offering the bill had been to present not a compromise but 
a principle of settlement. In the debate on July 2 preced- 
ing the vote, Seward spoke of the bill as a compromise; 
Toombs interrupted him saying, "It is no compromise." 
Seward rejoined, "The day for compromises is ended"; 
Toombs agreed, "I am glad of it, sir"; and Seward endorsed 
him: "The honorable Senator is glad of it, and so am I." 
Crittenden, however, who had now returned to the Senate, 
protested, "I will compromise 'to the last syllable of recorded 
time' to preserve this Union, so long as I can preserve it in 
its integrity and on those sound principles on which it 
originally rested." J A little later Toombs in reply to 
Seward and Sumner said: "When I make the annunciation 
that I am willing to surrender Kansas precisely in conformity 
with the will of the nation, . . . how am I met.? Instead of 
a pure ballot box, the Senator from Massachusetts and the 
Senator from New York tender me the cartridge box. Mr. 
President, if I believed these gentlemen represented the 
North, I would accept it and withdraw my bill now. If I 
believed that the free states were ready for that issue, before 
God and my country I would not shrink from it. I am 
content to accept it whenever the North offers it. . . . But 
I do not know what claim either of these gentlemen has to 
speak for the North." § 

In a supplementary debate in the Senate on July 9 ^ 

* Congressional Globe, 34th Cong., ist. sess., p. 1439. 

t Cf. Rhodes, History of the United States, II, 189-195. 

t Congressional Globe Appendix, 34th. Cong., ist. sess., pp. 762, 763. 

§ Ibid., p. 770. ^ Ibid., 34th Cong., 1st. sess., p. 869. 



A SENATOR IN THE FIFTIES 127 

Fessenden charged the pro-slavery element with responsi- 
bility for the disturbances in Kansas and adduced as evi- 
dence the report recently made by Howard and Sherman 
who formed the Republican majority appointed in thfe 
House for investigating affairs in Kansas. This document 
was silent concerning the massacre by John Brown and his 
followers on Pottawatomie creek; but the third member 
of the committee, Oliver, who formed its Democratic minor- 
ity, had prepared an independent report including data upon 
the Pottawatomie murders. Although Oliver's report was 
not presented to the House until two days after this debate 
in the Senate, information of it was current in the capital, 
and news of Brown's crime had of course already been pub- 
lished in such newspapers as had no interest in the suppres- 
sion of it. Replying to Fessenden, Toombs spoke slightingly 
of the Howard-Sherman report, declaring it to be partisan 
and thoroughly unreliable, since the politicians sent out to 
investigate would surely find what they set out to find and 
nothing more; and he intimated that a minority report would 
shortly be forthcoming. Fessenden interjected: "They 
stand two to one." Toombs retorted: "That is exactly 
where I knew they would stand." Toombs went on to 
reiterate his expressions of regret at the disorders in the 
territory and to attribute part of the responsibility to the 
anti-slavery partisans. "These free-state marauders," he 
said, "free-soil freebooters, it is well authenticated, have 
recently gone to the homes of peaceable citizens and mur- 
dered them in the dead of night. . . , Other murders and 
arsons of equal atrocity have been committed in that terri- 
tory. By whom? By those oppressed and peaceable free- 
state citizens of Kansas." Fessenden here made another 
of his frequent interruptions: "Have you any proof of it?" 
Toombs replied, "I have seen affidavits as to the facts," 
but he did not further press the point. He said a few minutes 
afterward in reference to Fessenden's interruptions and 



128 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

innuendoes: "The gentleman may aflFord to deal fairly with 
me, for I have no concealments." But Fessenden had some- 
thing to gain by avoiding frankness. The assertions which 
Toombs had made were entirely true, as the world now 
knows; but the evidence then within his reach was of 
partisan character and uncertain reliability. Evidence of 
similar quality was often used before and after that episode 
by Fessenden and his associates without hesitation; but 
Toombs's scruple for soundness of evidence doubtless enabled 
Fessenden by his pettifogging tactics to ward off an impend- 
ing philippic. It is curious that no other Southerner in 
Congress, except Oliver in presenting his report, made use 
of the Pottawatomie crime in discrediting the anti-slavery 
self-righteousness.* The end of the session was near at 
hand, and the Southerners were weary of the profitless 
wrangle. In their effort at pacification the Democratic 
majority had already carried the well-reasoned Toombs bill 
through the Senate on July 2 by 33 votes against the Republi- 
can 12. In the House, however, where the Republicans con- 
trolled the machinery, the Toombs bill was smothered. 
"Bleeding Kansas" served the anti-slavery politicians too 
well for them to join in any plan tending toward pacification. 
For the next year or two affairs in the territory continued 
in turmoil. In 1857 the territorial legislature summoned 
a convention to meet at Lecompton in September and frame 
a state constitution. This body drew up a constitution on 
the model of that of Missouri, and provided that it should 
go into effect upon the admission of the state by Congress 
without being submitted for popular ratification except in 
regard to a single clause relating to slavery. The President 
transmitted this Lecompton constitution to Congress in 
February, 1858, and recommended the admission of the state. 
Douglas opposed this on the ground that the principle of 
popular sovereignty required a plebiscite upon the constitu- 
* Rhodes, History 0/ the United States, II, 198. 



A SENATOR IN THE FIFTIES 129 

tion. Toombs however contended that delegates elected 
for the purpose were entirely competent to express the 
sovereign will of the people. He declared that there was 
no unusual occasion for a popular referendum of the con- 
vention's work in Kansas, and showed that the great majority 
of constitutions adopted in the American commonwealths 
had not been popularly ratified.* Toombs supported the 
Lecompton bill of course, and aided in its passage by the Sen- 
ate on March 23. When the House rejected this and passed 
a substitute which the Senate rejected, and a conference 
committee presented in the English bill a device for referring 
the constitution to a popular vote in Kansas, Toombs sup- 
ported this also. He still wanted to end the wrangle by 
admitting the state; but his principal feeling was of disgust at 
the nauseous entanglement of affairs, and his chief desire was 
to wash his hands of the whole business. He said, April 29: 

"The conduct of the population of Kansas has been such 
as not at all to increase my estimate of their capacity for 
self-government. It would be sufficient for me, even after 
having voted for it in 1856, to say now that the events of the 
last two years have convinced me that she ought not to be 
admitted as a state. I apply this remark to all; I do not 
apply it to free-state men more than to others. There have 
been wars, and tumults, and frauds, and cheatings, and a 
disposition manifested everywhere in that territory totally 
to disregard the law. If one party get a legislature, they 
turn everybody else out, no matter which party it is; and 
a majority of one is as good as a unanimous vote. There 
seems to be an incapacity in this population, thrown in there, 
I admit, under the most unfortunate circumstances, to govern 
themselves; and I am free to acknowledge that I shall not 
regret if one consequence of this measure shall be to put 
them back in a territorial condition." f 

Soon after the enactment of the English bill, Toombs while 
assisting at a Democratic love-feast at the White House 

* Congressional Globe Appendix, 35th. Cong., ist. sess., pp. 524-526. 
t Congressional Globe, 3Sth. Cong., ist. sess., p. 1873. 



I30 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

was asked for a public expression of his views regarding it, 
and said: 

"This is a pacification in which there has been no dishonor 
anywhere, in which there has been no concession by the 
North to the South, or by the South to the North; but in 
a spirit of brotherhood and patriotism they have come to- 
gether and settled their sectional differences upon a sacred 
and permanent and fundamental ground of public principle 
and public honor. [Applause.] Therefore, as there is a 
triumph nowhere, there is a sting nowhere, and we see noth- 
ing in the bright and brilliant future but peace and harmony 
and prosperity to the glorious organization of the Democratic 
party who have brought the country safe through all its 
struggles. Therefore, gentlemen, I have a right to rejoice. 
Let us all rejoice. Let the voice reverberate from the hill- 
tops and through the valleys all over the land, from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Lakes to the Gulf, that 
there is peace, true peace, honorable peace, throughout the 
land of America." * 

It seemed for the time in fact, with the rendering of the 
Dred Scott decision in 1857 and the enactment of the English 
bill in 1858, that sectional discord had been ended on a basis 
wholly acceptable to the South. The rejection of the Lecomp- 
ton constitution in the Kansas plebiscite and the repudiation 
of the Dred Scott judgment by all the revived forces of agi- 
tation at the North soon showed the baselessness of the hope 
of peace. But before narrating the distressing events which 
determined Toombs and most of his Southern colleagues 
finally to strike for Southern independence, let us consider the 
more peaceful theme of Toombs's non-sectional activities in 
the Senate, his participation in party developments among 
the people, and his expressions of views upon negro slavery. 

In the routine affairs of the Senate Toombs's indomitable 

devotion to frugality and justice was even more marked 

than it had been in the House, and oftentimes made him a 

thorn in the flesh of his more easy-going fellow Senators. 

* Southern Recorder, Feb. 14, i860. 



A SENATOR IN THE FIFTIES 131 

They occasionally attempted to refute his arguments; they 
more often combined their votes to override his resistance; 
and the great bulk of the people were too much absorbed in 
the slavery struggle, party rivalries and private money- 
making to heed his patriotic alarms. 

Toombs consistently maintained that the government 
should collect from the people only the minimum amount 
of money required for the conduct of its distinctly necessary 
activities. All branches added to the public service for the 
advantage or convenience of any specific group of the people 
he believed should have their expenses defrayed directly by 
the beneficiaries. Against the clamor of the great majority 
of his colleagues he sturdily contended that appropriations 
from the public treasury for either private or local benefit, 
where not clearly obligatory for the sake of good faith, were 
unsound and demoralizing as well as in most cases uncon- 
stitutional. He held that the army should be kept small, 
with the militia available for emergencies; * he maintained 
that government employees should be paid only the market 
rate of wages, so that clerkships should cease to be consid- 
ered as plums.f On the other hand he thought that salaries 
for judges and other responsible officials should be made 
adequate to attract capable men, but that they ought not 
to depend on favoritism or caprice. He thought that the 
postal service should be self-supporting whether on land or 
sea, and he particularly opposed the subsidies granted to 
the Collins Line of transatlantic steamers, on the pretense of 
quickening the transit of the mails. He was particularly 
severe in censuring the Collins Line because it was monop- 
olistic and because it notoriously maintained a lobby at 
Washington to promote its interests.} Upon similar grounds 

* Congressional Globe, 35th Cong., ist. sess., pp. 406-408. 
t Ibid., p. 2107. 

t Congressional Globe Appendix, 33d. Cong., 2d. sess., pp. 297-300; Con- 
gressional Globe, 35th. Cong., ist. sess., pp. 2832, 2834. 



132 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

of lobbying he was equally severe upon certain persons 
endeavoring to persuade Congress to give them contracts 
for the erection of dry-docks. Toombs in fact declared . 
repeatedly that Congress was utterly incompetent for mak- 
ing a wise contract. "How can Congress make a contract?" 
he asked in the Collins Line debate, and answered his own 
rhetorical question: 

"Here are sixty-four of us in this body; there are two 
hundred and thirty-six in the other House — gentlemen of 
different pursuits. True, there may be one or two ship- 
carpenters among the whole number, but the great bulk of 
them are fit for nothing on earth but politics — fit for no 
business. ... As for the idea that such a body can make 
a contract, I presume there is not a human being in America, 
black or white, who can doubt that it is the most unfit body 
for such a purpose that could be collected. . . . Nine-tenths 
act from ignorance on such a matter, . . . and we generally 
have only ex 'parte statements from those interested. We 
have not time to examine the public questions connected 
with the various departments of the government and all 
the little contracts besides. It is impossible to do that and 
attend to our legislative duties." 

Toombs was attentive to little matters in the routine as 
well as to great ones, with a special penchant for obstructing 
private pension bills and exposing river-and-harbor grabs. 
He opposed all pension bills whether general or private, on 
the ground that they gave unjustified gratuities; and he 
was incorrigible in preventing private bills from slipping 
through upon lenient committee reports unless their merits 
were clearly demonstrated in open Senate. His attitude 
upon all bills for the payment of private claims was identical 
with that upon pensions. In 1858, for example, on a bill 
to indemnify the builder of a lighthouse on Lake Huron 
which had blown down in 1832, he said: 

"I believe that nine-tenths of the cases which the Senate 
is continually pressed to consider, to the omission of the 



A SENATOR IN THE FIFTIES 133 

general public business, come legitimately and expressly 
within the jurisdiction of the Court of Claims, and often- 
times they are fraudulent and brought here because a com- 
mittee is necessarily an easier place than a court. Refer 
it to my committee, and I must necessarily take ex parte 
evidence. I am not in a condition to look out and get 
evidence on the other side. That is the very reason we 
established the court — mainly to get the facts on both 
sides. . . . This case should go there as ... a case 
expressly within their jurisdiction. . . . It is very remark- 
able that this man should have been here twenty-five years 
ago and never got his bill through. Very probably at that 
time other people knew something about it. . . . The 
officers of the government knew something about it. They 
have passed away in this quarter of a century. Where are 
they today? The claimant comes here today with this 
ex -parte statement and asks the Senate to pass it. It is 
bad as a principle; it is bad as a precedent; and the Senate 
ought not to allow it." 

The motion to refer it to the Court of Claims, however, 
was defeated by 27 votes to 13 and the bill was passed. 

River-and-harbor bills were the greatest of these abomi- 
nations in Toombs's sight, because he considered them 
unconstitutional as well as corrupt. Again and again he 
resisted their enactment, now with fiery denunciation and 
now with restrained vehemence. "The whole system is 
founded on robbery, plunder and inequality," he declared in 
one of these debates on July 31, 1854, "and is supported for 
no other reason than because it is unequal and unjust. If 
the money which is appropriated to these improvements 
had to be paid out by each locality, they would prefer a 
more convenient mode of doing it; but it is because they 
expect to plunder other sections that they seek to pay 
themselves out of the common fund. ... As a responsible 
Senator I am called upon to vote upon these appropriations 
when even the committee having charge of the bill do not 
pretend to know their necessity." The log-rolling which 



134 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

was a feature of this legislation was especially a stench in 
his nostrils: "If any man votes for one appropriation to 
get another, he votes corruptly, and is unworthy of a seat 
on this floor. It is against principles of legislation and 
against all principles of honor. ... If you have delib- 
erately voted for one measure which does not meet the 
approbation of your judgment, in order to get another, you 
have voted corruptly, you have not discharged your duty." 
"Every abuse," he proclaimed on another occasion, "is the 
natural ally of every other abuse." In a running debate 
in July and August, 1856, he expressed his opinion of the 
committees which reported this class of bills. In the course 
of the discussion Toombs said: "We know the liberality 
with which this committee have acted; and when they are 
acting for the benefit of their own sections and states it is 
certainly not impossible that their attachment to their 
beloved constituents may have made them unjust to the 
whole country. What is the basis on which these estimates 
are made?" Mr. Stuart of Michigan retorted with the 
question, "Who is responsible for the organization of the 
committee, let me ask?" Toombs replied: "I am a very 
plain man, and if I were to go into this matter and tell 
exactly how it is done, gentlemen would say I was personal, 
and that I was very rude and rough. I know how com- 
mittees are formed, and it is one of the greatest abuses in 
the Senate." Stuart replied: "So far as I am concerned, 
let it come out or not, as the Senator chooses; but I want to 
ask if the committees of the Senate are not elected by the 
Senate?" Toombs answered: "Yes, sir; but does not every 
Senator know how they are elected? Are not lists brought 
here from party caucuses?" Stuart replied by another 
question: "Is it not the fact that they are elected by the 
Senate?" which Toombs answered by saying, "It is a sham 
election." The colloquy was continued at considerable 
length on that day and resumed on the next, July 30, when 



A SENATOR IN THE FIFTIES 135 

Toombs said: "Enterprising people, who look for appro- 
priations, who get on committees to reach the public treasury, 
get appropriations very readily for their own localities." 
Mr. Cass thereupon weakly enquired, "Does the Senator 
know that they are in any place where they are not wanted ?'* 
Toombs rejoined: "I suppose everywhere you can find 
somebody who says they are wanted. I say these appro- 
priations are unequal; but that, it seems, does not make 
any difference." Toombs supported his contentions by 
appeals to the Constitution and citations of the fathers: 

"Why do we want constitutions? Because we know that 
majorities are unjust. Why do we bind every man who 
takes a seat here by the strongest obligations that can bind 
a man, appealing to Omnipotence for the truth of his decla- 
ration that he will stand by and maintain and support the 
Constitution of the United States? Because the framers 
of the Constitution would not trust you without it. The 
Constitution is based on the idea that where the interests 
of particular localities are at stake men are not to be trusted; 
majorities are not to be relied upon; they are unjust; they 
will take advantages. The whole history of human nature 
is daubed and blackened and defiled by the injustice and the 
wrong of power. Am I to refrain from saying this because 
the venerable Senator from Michigan tells me it is unfortu- 
nate that this impression should go abroad? . . . Let it be 
proclaimed that it may be remedied." * 

Again, discussing the devotion of the Senators belonging 
to the Republican party to this form of corruption, he said: 

" Gentlemen are mistaken if they suppose that any other 
interest can make me pay tribute. ... As for the Black 
Republicans, under whatever name they may have gone — 
under the various aliases which they have assumed, from 
old Federalists till now, they have always been ready to 
squander public money. They have never stopped to 
inquire into its constitutionality. Their object was to get 
as much into the treasury as they could, by unequal and 
unjust taxation, and then vote it out on the same principles. 

* Congressional Globe Appendix, 34th. Cong., 1st. sess., p. 1052. 



136 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

They acknowledged no restrictions and shrank from no 
waste or profligacy. ... A large party, found mostly in 
one portion of the country, have endeavored to live through 
and by means of the government. This party, under all 
names and phases, has struggled from the first day of its 
existence until now to get every particle of the industry 
of their section protected by the government. Then its 
representatives come here and reproach the South. They 
say to her: Your slave states are poor — that they are cursed 
with slavery. . . . What branch of industry of Massachusetts 
is there that has not been protected, from 1789 until this day, 
by duties, by legislation shaped for that purpose, and that pur- 
pose mainly! New York, her Senator boasts, waves the wand 
of commerce, and everything is turned to gold. Sir, if this 
were all the wand she waved, her prosperity would be a sub- 
ject of unalloyed pleasure to all her confederates; but with her 
political power she strikes the rock of the public treasury, and 
a stream of public treasure pours into her lap. . . . We of 
the South have sought none of these unjust advantages. We 
till the earth. We have sought no protection from this gov- 
ernment — none of its money. ... I have not been sent 
here to ask the public money on behalf of my constituents. 
For eleven years since I have been in the two houses of 
Congress, my constituents have never asked me to introduce 
one bill for the benefit of their industry, their pursuits, neither 
special nor general; and I have never introduced one." * 

These bills were usually passed by the votes of the North- 
ern Senators, aided by those from Kentucky and Louisiana 
against the opposition of the rest of the Southerners. 

In May, 1858, the issue recurred upon a motion of Mr. 
Wade of Ohio to take up and tack together a group of river- 
and-harbor bills with a view to expediting their passage. 
Toombs in opposing the bills returned the rattling fire of a 
dozen other Senators. He said: 

"My object is to refuse such appropriations as are im- 
properly asked for by the government, and to limit it to 
those that are necessary. That is the only true road to 
economy. ... As far as my inquiries have gone, interest is 

* Congressional Globe, 34th. Cong., ist. sess., pp. 1805, 1806. 



A SENATOR IN THE FIFTIES 137 

the life-blood of these applications. Improvements are made 
for the benefit of owners of wharf property, owners of town 
sites, who desire to build up towns by spending among them- 
selves the public money. ... It is an unjust system; it 
is a wrong system; it is an indefensible system. Gentle- 
men talk of nationality, and now and then they throw in a 
glorification for the Union. These are the clap-traps by 
which they extort the labors of the poor for the benefit of 
the rich. The masses throughout the United States, who 
are referred to by the Senator from Massachusetts, the 
laboring men, are taxed upon their sugar and other commodi- 
ties as much as the rich man; but they do not own town lots; 
they do not own fronts on Chicago river; they do not own 
eight hundred thousand dollars' worth of wharf property, like 
Gerritt Smith, at Oswego. . . . The Senator from Vermont 
says it is diflftcult to get a just system of taxation. I admit 
it. I admit that it is next to impossible in human institu- 
tions to get a just system of taxation; but in every question 
that comes before me it is my duty as a Senator and as a 
citizen to approximate that point as near as possible. But 
the moment he sees there is a difficulty, he gets as far oflF 
from it as possible. That is the diff^erence between us. . . . 
As a fundamental principle of human justice, I will apportion 
all the burdens of the government on the persons who get 
the benefits, as exactly and as equally as I can. Though it 
be imperfect, if I am legislating to that point I am legis- 
lating justly; and if I depart from it I am legislating un- 
justly. These two Senators advocate unjust legislation. . . . 
If the money is taken out of the public treasury there is not 
a spot in the United States where the shipowners and the 
merchants will not ask you to give them greater facilities. 
But make them pay for it themselves, and they will count 
both sides — the advantages on the one side and the dis- 
advantages on the other. . . . They do not come here to 
beg you to give them the right to tax themselves, but they 
beg you to plunder the public treasury for their benefit. 
They understand it. They are very easily satisfied with 
arguments. I have no doubt that by the mercantile classes, 
the people benefited by this system, the arguments of the 
Senators from Louisiana and Vermont will be considered 
unanswerable." * 

* Congressional Globe, 3Sth. Cong., 1st. sess., pp. 2350-2352; 2380-2384. 



138 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

When the debate was concluded, the more important bills 
in the group were passed by about 26 yeas, including all the 
Republican Senators, against about 17 nays, including all 
the Southerners but Crittenden and Thompson of Kentucky 
and Benjamin of Louisiana. 

Upon all similar matters, such as appropriations for build- 
ing and maintaining custom-houses, mints and the hke, 
Toombs's attitude was the same as upon the river-and- 
harbor bills. He refused, for example, to support appro- 
priations for the maintenance of the branch mint which had 
been established at Dahlonega, Ga., twenty-five years before. 
"I do not want a dollar of the public money expended on 
the state of Georgia," he said. "If you are going to spend 
money wrongfully, if you are going to spend money profli- 
gately, I wish you to do it anywhere else but within the 
limits of my own state." * 

On the other hand he maintained that just obligations 
ought to be discharged with scrupulous honesty, including 
the payment of interest upon claims where it had been 
officially promised in case of delay in the payment of the 
principal. The squanderers were of course on the lookout 
for some item in Toombs's own career upon which they might 
base a tu quoque argument. The only thing discovered which 
they could possibly distort into such a use was his course 
upon the Galphin claim; and with this they taunted him, 
regardless of the merits of the case. These allusions merely 
drew from Toombs vehement defenses of the justice of his 
course; but they served their sinister purpose to some 
extent in weakening the popular force of Toombs's appeal 
for honest policy. 

The Galphin claim had impressed Toombs as meritorious 

at the time of his first entrance into public life; and he had 

unflaggingly supported it until the time of its full settlement. 

George Galphin had been a prominent Indian-trader on the 

* Congressional Globe, 35th. Cong., ist. sess., p. 1217. 



A SENATOR IN THE FIFTIES 139 

Savannah river in the period just prior to and during the 
American Revolution. In 1773 the Creek and Cherokee 
tribes had become heavily indebted to Galphin and other 
traders; and in that year when they ceded a great tract of 
land to the British government they stipulated that the 
moneys arising from the sale of these lands to settlers should 
be applied by Great Britain in payment of such debts as 
might be found due from them to the traders. The value 
of the lands was ample to cover the debts. Galphin was 
found by the British commissioners to have a just claim 
under this adjustment of £9791, 15s. 5d., and was given a 
certificate to that effect, May 2, 1775. The commissioners 
disposed of some of the lands but had paid Galphin nothing 
when the Revolution began, in which Galphin played a 
prominent part as an advocate of American Independence. 
In 1790 the British government made an appropriation for 
the payment of the debts due the traders, although the lands 
had been lost to British jurisdiction; but on account of 
Galphin's having been a rebel, the claim of his executor was 
denied by the British authorities. Meanwhile the state of 
Georgia had granted large portions of these lands in military 
bounties and settlers' head-rights. In 1780 the Georgia legis- 
lature asserted the right of the state to the land, and pro- 
vided that people having claims against these lands should 
lay their accounts before that or some future legislature, 
and that all claims found just and proper and due to the 
friends of America should be paid in treasury certificates 
payable in two, three and four years, and bearing six per 
cent interest. Thomas Galphin, son and executor of George 
Galphin, presented the Galphin claim to the legislature in 
1789, and a favorable committee report was made upon it, 
but no action was taken by the legislature. After its re- 
jection by the British authorities the claim was again pre- 
sented to the Georgia legislature in 1793. A committee 
approved it emphatically and the report was agreed to by 



140 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

the Senate; but the House did not act. The claim was 
renewed at many subsequent sessions, and committees 
reported in most cases favorably, and in some approving 
the payment of interest as v/ell as principal; but the legis- 
lature took no action. Many persons considered that the 
claim lay more properly against the federal government 
than against Georgia, because much of the land had been 
used in promoting the common defense, and because of the 
assumption of state debts by Congress in 1790. Although 
the time allowed by the assumption act for the presentation 
of state accounts had lapsed without the presentation of 
the Galphin claim, it was noted that Congress assumed 
additional debts of Virginia in 1832, and it was thought by 
many who recognized the justice of the Galphin claim that 
it should be similarly settled. Governor Schley so advised 
President Jackson in 1836. 

Toombs as a member of the Georgia legislature thought 
it a reproach to the state and the nation that the claim was 
still unpaid. In the session of 1838 he introduced a petition 
from Milledge Galphin, who then represented the claimants, 
and had it referred to a committee with himself as chairman. 
This committee reported in a bill for the relief of the Galphin 
heirs, and also a set of resolutions requesting Congress to 
reimburse the state for such outlay as should be made. 
The legislature then took no action; but at its session of 
1839 directed the governor to appoint a commission to 
examine and report upon this and other claims. The report 
of this commission was received in December, 1840, and 
referred to a committee with Toombs as a member. The 
majority of this committee, composed of Democrats, who as 
a party in the state at that time were disposed to be irre- 
sponsible, reported that the state was not bound in justice 
or equity to pay the claim. The minority, Toombs, T. M. 
Berrien and A. H. Chappell, argued the question at length 
In their report, and asserted that the state was justly in- 



A SENATOR IN THE FIFTIES 141 

debted and ought to pay principal and interest at six per 
cent, at least from January i, 1781. The House agreed to 
the majority report, Toombs and Stephens voting no. 

When Toombs went to Congress he carried with him his 
advocacy of the Galphin claim. In the Senate, bills for the 
satisfaction of the claim were passed at several sessions, 
and finally in 1848 one of these bills was passed by the 
House and approved by the President. The bill author- 
ized the Secretary of the Treasury to "examine and adjust" 
the claim and "to pay the amount which may be found 
due, to Milledge Galphin, executor." The then Secretary 
of the Treasury, Mr. Walker, referred the claim to one of 
the auditors in the Treasury Department for examination, 
and this auditor reported that both principal and interest 
ought to be paid. Mr. Walker, however, whose term was 
just expiring, directed that the principal only should be 
paid; and left the question of the interest to be settled by 
his successor. In the incoming cabinet of President Taylor, 
Meredith of Pennsylvania was Secretary of the Treasury, 
Reverdy Johnson of Maryland, Attorney General, and 
George W. Crawford of Georgia, Secretary of War. Now 
Crawford had been engaged since 1832 as the attorney of 
the Galphin heirs to prosecute their claim, to receive for 
his services a contingent fee of one-half the amount re- 
covered. Upon entering the cabinet he retained his interest 
in the claim, but employed another attorney to handle it, 
and informed no one in the administration but the President 
of his interest in it. Taylor told him that he saw no im- 
propriety in the course he was pursuing. When the claim 
for interest was brought before Meredith he first referred 
it to an auditor who recommended that it be disallowed. 
He then asked the opinion of the Attorney General, who 
advised that the interest be paid; and in accordance with 
the latter advice he paid the claim for interest, amounting 
to $191,352.89, in March, 1850. 



142 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

Soon afterward the fact reached the press that the Secre- 
tary of War had received a great sum as attorney for the 
claimants, and a great newspaper outcry was raised. Secre- 
tary Crawford thereupon requested the Speaker of the House 
to direct a committee to investigate his conduct. This 
committee of nine presented on May 17, 1850, a narrative 
of the history of the claim and of Crawford's connection 
therewith, but no majority of the committee agreeing in 
any one set of recommendations in the premises, three partly 
conflicting minority reports were presented.* In the course 
of a heated debate, Toombs moved on July i a resolution 
that there had been no evidence submitted by the commit- 
tee which impugned Crawford's personal or official conduct 
in relation to the settlement of the claim by the proper 
officers of the government. This, with an amendment 
guarding against the precedent, was lost by 82 yeas to 92 
nays, July 6. In the following week the House adopted 
resolutions by majorities of about two to one that the Gal- 
phin claim had not been a just one against the United 
States; that the act of Congress had made it the duty of the 
Secretary of the Treasury to pay the principal of the claim; 
but that the payment of the interest on the claim had not 
been done in conformity with law or precedent. Toombs, 
of course, and most of his Whig colleagues, voted in the 
negative in each instance. In Toombs's mind the whole 
episode was a commentary upon the handling of just claims 
by irresponsible governments much more than upon the 
conduct of his friend Crawford. He was outspoken in 
endorsing the settlement of the claim, and when challenged 
in after years was always ready to defend it anew. 

An instance of this, exhibiting Toombs's manner and his 
attitude upon other things as well as the Galphin claim, 
occurred in the course of a debate on public printing, on 
May 13, 1858, precipitated by a proposal of Mr. Doolittle 

* Congressional Globe Appendix, 31st. Cong., ist. sess., pp. 546-556. 



A SENATOR IN THE FIFTIES 143 

of Wisconsin to provide extra pay for the reporters in 
the Senate.* Toombs spoke slightingly of the value of the 
Congressional Globe. "Now," said he, "one half of the 
debates here are of no consequence to the country or to 
anybody. . . . Why, sir, you would have to give a great 
many persons in the country ten dollars a day to read the 
Globe. Nobody reads it. I think it is a good burial place." 
He then took up personal themes: 

"Gentlemen have spoken about speeches being retained. 
Well, I suppose I have a trunk full of them now. In the 
variety of my engagements in the Senate here, in my office, 
at home, attending to my duties in this body, attending to 
the public interest, and trying to p*revent this very thing of 
plundering the treasury, I had not time frequently, espe- 
cially at the latter part of a session, to look over and correct 
the inaccurate reports of my remarks, and so they were 
laid aside for some other time. . . . But, sir, the point I 
made in this case was not whether the reporting was good 
or bad. . . . The question I made here is one which no 
Senator has thought proper to meet, except the honorable 
Senator from Mississippi [Mr. Brown], and he has taken a very 
curious view of it. He almost accuses me with filching money 
from Mr. Rives's pocket because I will not pay his workmen, 
when I pay him to pay them. ... I say it is filching money 
out of the public treasury, contrary to law and justice. . . . 
I do not believe today there is as corrupt a government under 
the heavens as that of these United States. 

"Mr. Hale. Nor I either. 

"Several other Senators. I agree to that. 

"Mr. Toombs. And most of all its corruption is in the 
legislative department. . . . 

"Mr. Doolittle. The honorable Senator from Georgia has 
been pleased to make some allusion to myself personally. . . . 
Sir, the history of that Senator is known upon various 
public measures; and it may be well for him not to push 
that matter too far. 

"Mr. Toombs. Any extent whatever, sir. I defy all 
scrutiny. 

* Congressional Globe Appendix, 35th. Cong., ist. sess., pp. 357-360. 



144 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

"Mr. Doolittle. Has the honorable Senator ever heard of 
Galphinism? 

"Mr. Toombs. I have. 

"Mr. DooHttle. Mr. President, I do not desire to enter 
into a personal controversy here with this Senator. It is 
not my purpose to do it. But I give him to understand that 
I do not receive these lectures as addressed to myself per- 
sonally. . . . 

"Mr. Toombs. The Senator from Wisconsin asks me if I 
have heard of Galphinism. I desire an explanation from 
him on that subject. If he charges me, in connection with 
any branch of public service, now or at any time, with any 
improper action on any public transaction whatever, I wish 
to know it. 

"Mr. Doolittle. In relation to the subject of Galphinism, 
and the claim from which that name was derived, I under- 
stand that the honorable Senator — I may be misinformed 
as to the fact — in the House of Representatives advocated 
that claim, about which so much was said at the time. I do 
not impugn the motives of the Senator in doing it; but if I 
am misinformed as to the fact, I am willing to be corrected. 

"Mr. Toombs. This is rather an extraordinary way of 
dealing with public questions, for a Senator to make an 
allusion without intending an imputation. I do not under- 
stand it that way. . . . You are not at all mistaken in the 
fact. When that interest was allowed, I defended it in the 
House of Representatives, and I defend it here. I know that 
the then Secretary of War came to the House of Represent- 
atives and demanded that the question be referred to the 
Supreme Court of the United States, pledging himself to 
refund the money if the decision was not affirmed by the 
highest tribunal of his country; and a partisan majority in 
this House put it down. I suppose the gentleman got his 
information from his allies; and I dare say millions of dollars 
have been stolen in this country under the cry of Galphin- 
ism. It is the common cry when there is a desire to plunder 
the public treasury. . . . This cry I know has been the 
common slosh of party newspapers, but I did not expect to 
hear it in the Senate, unless from a gentleman who knew 
enough about the claim to point out what was wrong in it, 
wherein it violated public principle. I voted for it and I 
glory in it as an act of justice and right. . . ." 



A SENATOR IN THE FIFTIES 145 

Another case in which Toombs battled vaHantly for his 
standard of justice was that of the naval officers removed 
from service through the action of the "Naval Retiring 
Board" of 1855. An act, approved February 28, authorized 
the President to appoint a board of fifteen naval officers 
to examine the efficiency of the officers of the navy and 
report to the President, to be stricken from the rolls or 
placed on the retired list, the names of such officers as 
should be judged incapable of efficient performance of duty 
both ashore and afloat. The board when organized adopted 
an exaggerated interpretation of its functions, and applied 
summary process in its transactions. In sittings during 
one month it passed upon the qualifications of all the seven 
hundred officers in the navy. It then recommended the 
dismissal of above fifty of these for incompetence and the 
transfer of about one hundred and fifty others to the retired 
list, ranging from commodores to lieutenants and masters, 
and including the celebrated Matthew F. Maury. The 
Secretary of the Navy when transmitting this report to the 
President stated that in his judgment the board had com- 
mitted many errors, but on the whole he considered that the 
execution of its findings would be beneficial to the navy. 
The President undiscriminatingly endorsed the whole of 
the findings, and then as by law required, proceeded to 
fill the vacancies caused by these wholesale dismissals and 
retirements. To do this he promoted the officers remaining 
on the active-service list, including of course the members 
of the recent Naval Retiring Board. Next winter Congress 
was flooded with petitions from the aggrieved victims. The 
House was in the throes of a dead-locked Speaker's election, 
and the brunt of the business fell upon the Senate. — 

It was brought out upon inquiry that the boar^Jild made 
no record of its proceedings and had assiglTeH no reasons 
for its decisions. In January, 1856, Mason of Virginia and 
Hale of New Hampshire made vigorous attacks upon the 



146 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

transaction, which was defended by Mallory of Florida, 
chairman of the committee on the navy, and by Benjamin 
of Louisiana. In February the onslaught was renewed, with 
Toombs as the leader. On February 2, in a speech on the 
Naval Retiring Board he said: 



"This being a court of special and limited jurisdiction, it 
became important that they should have kept a record, and 
that record should have shown that each case on which 
they acted was within the operation of the law. ... It 
will not be pretended that under the law they could strike 
a man from the rolls for whatever cause they thought proper. 
. . . They were to confine themselves to the question of 
his capacity to perform his duties on shore and at sea. If 
they went beyond that their proceedings were null and void. 
Then, sir, as it became important that their proceedings 
under this act should show that they had not exceeded 
their jurisdiction, these proceedings became void by not 
showing it. . . . My friend from Louisiana has admitted 
that the Secretary of the Navy made a mistake. By that 
admission the whole question is surrendered. His instruc- 
tions to the board gave, or presumed to give to them, an 
authority which the law did not confer. His adopting their 
proceedings as a whole, with the admission that their find- 
ing in some cases was wrong, was fatal to the whole action 
of the board." 

After further debate Toombs grew more vehement. On 
February 13 he said: 

"The gentleman [Mr. Mallory] says that he supposed 
Senators would hear the complaints of those who might 
suffer from the action of this board. I thank God that such 
is the truth, and that there can be no injustice done to a 
great body of faithful public servants in this country when 
there will not be found willing ears to hear and redress it in 
the American Senate. ... I stand here today not only to 
do these petitioners justice, but to defend a great and sacred 
principle of human justice. It is older than time; it is 
Heaven-born; recognized of all nations; plead by the 
Apostle Paul against the injustice of his judges. He declared 
it was not the manner of the Romans to condemn any man 



A SENATOR IN THE FIFTIES 147 

unless he was brought face to face to his accusers. . . . 
These rights I demand for these petitioners today; and 
they shall have them. [Applause from the galleries.] . . . 
Give me the record — the law, universal justice demands it; 
give me the record — even the Inquisition, the worst tri- 
bunal which ever disgraced humanity, brought its victims 
face to face with their accusers. This board is charged with 
secretly accusing its victims, . . . with secretly seeking 
informers to blast the fair fame of their brother officers, and 
then with concealing from them the nature of their alleged 
crimes and the witnesses by whom they were supported. . . . 
The chairman of the naval committee seems to expect to 
avoid these demands by giving us what he deems excellent 
reasons for retiring old captains, and amuses us with the 
exploits of young heroes. It seems from his account that 
we had many more captains than we had any use for. . . . He 
deems it expedient, as there is nothing for so many old cap- 
tains to do, to help the matter by adding thirty-odd young 
and vigorous commanders to the list, in order, I suppose, to 
help them to do nothing. . . . Here lies, I fear, the true diffi- 
culty in the case — an impatience for promotion. . . . But, 
sir, to retire an efficient officer is dishonorable. . . . They 
demand the justice of their country; and I stand here this 
day to require it, and I will continue to demand it as long as 
I have the constitutional right to do so on this floor." 

The discussion was again resumed in July, when Toombs 
laid especial stress on the fact that the board had dismissed 
certain officers on the ground of immorality. "When you 
put a man on trial for immorality," he said, "the law is made 
in the breast of the judges. . . . You leave it undefined, 
which I need not say is the worst provision of a penal law." 
He continued: "My friend from Louisiana said the other 
day that he could hardly argue this question with me, because 
I am apt to get excited upon it. . . . In defiance of all 
justice, of all right, and, as I say, of the fundamental prin- 
ciples of liberty ever3rwhere, they tried their comrades, 
condemned them, and took their places. I did become 
indignant, and I thank God I am indignant at such injus- 



148 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

tice, and I hope I shall ever remain so." * The issue was settled 
at length by an act in January, 1857, providing for a board 
of inquiry to examine the qualifications of the petitioning 
officers and their reinstatement in case of favorable findings. 

Another instance of Toombs's non-sectional and non- 
partisan devotion to justice was in the Iowa contested 
senatorial election of 1856-57. The election of Harlan, a 
Republican, was being contested on a technicality, and 
virtually all the Democrats in the Senate, except Toombs, 
were opposed to his being seated. Toombs, in spite of 
his belief that the Republican politicians were essentially 
hypocritical and that the tendencies of their party were 
pernicious, maintained that Harlan had been truly elected 
and was entitled to his seat. He delivered one of the strong- 
est speeches of his whole career in support of Harlan's claim, 
January, 1857, and voted with the Republicans in Harlan's 
behalf, only to be overridden by the Democratic majority. f 

And finally, upon the tariflP issue, which has been second 
only to that of slavery in promoting sectional antagonism 
in American politics, the attitude of Toombs throughout 
his congressional career was probably less influenced by local 
and sectional considerations than that of any other leading 
public man of his time. His community had nothing to 
gain and much to lose by tariff protection in any form. 
But Toombs consistently maintained that a moderate 
discrimination for the sake of protection was legitimate and 
wholesome in promoting the economic strength of the nation. 
His early expressions in this line have been sketched in a 
previous chapter. His latest one, made in the Senate on 
February 9, 1859, was a ripened exposition of the same 
doctrine. Demonstrating the fallacies of the Pennsylvania 

* Congressional Globe, 34th. Cong., ist. sess., pp. 243, 408, 409, 1621, 
1622. 

t Described in J. C. Reed, The Brothers' War, pp. 240-242; Congressional 
Globe, 35th. Cong., ist. sess., pp. 240-244. 



A SENATOR IN THE FIFTIES 149 

Senators, indulging in no invective, but abounding in 
aphorisms of sound philosophy upon many phases of politics, 
it showed that the vicissitudes of thirteen years had not 
disturbed his position. In concluding the speech he said: 

"The school in which I was brought up a protective Whig 
[taught] that we were to raise no more revenue than the 
economical wants of the government required, and in levy- 
ing that revenue to discriminate for our infant manufactures. 
What for? That we might divert capital into them, that 
we might prevent them from being crushed in their infancy. 
Well, sir, when is the iron manufacture going to get grown? 
I want to know. That was the ground it was put on in 
1842. I want to know when the iron interest will ever 
attain its majority. It has had, taking the fluctations in 
duties and prices, as much as one hundred and fifty per cent 
protection for forty-three years — from 1816 to this day. 
Have they not had enough experience in making iron? . . . 
"I have stated that the tariff of 1857 was a tariff for revenue, 
discriminating for protection. It discriminated largely. 
At that period we found our revenues abundant, and we 
determined to readjust the tariff system so as to lessen the 
revenues. My friend from Virginia and myself, and gentle- 
men all over the country, with different views of protection 
and free trade, said that as the country was generally pros- 
perous, as we must reduce our revenue, we were content 
that even advantages should be had. The woolen manufac- 
turing interest said that we had allowed a duty of thirty per 
cent on wool which had worked hard on them; and they 
asked us to give them coarse wool free of duty, that they 
might compete with England, and to put woolens in the 
highest schedule. We did it; and they went on their way 
rejoicing. We dealt fairly by every branch of industry. 
The Senator from New York [Mr. Seward], the representa- 
tive not of free trade, but of free soil and protection, was a 
member of the committee of conference on that bill, and it 
received the approbation of his judgment. . , . 

"But because a monetary convulsion has overtaken the 
country and because protection entered into a state election, 
the whole world is to be disturbed; and our revenue system, 
which you agreed upon as a national settlement, is to be 



I50 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

readjusted. I say it was a national settlement, because all 
sections harmonized upon it, and I congratulated the country 
at the time that Massachusetts and South Carolina, East 
and West, North and South, all united in favor of it. All 
the Senators in this body except eight, and two-thirds of the 
members of an opposition House, deliberately said: 'We 
will make this hereafter a financial question, not a party 
one; and we will put it on this basis.' But now the Senator 
from Pennsylvania tells us — and we are told by the govern- 
ment organs — that we must have a readjustment of the 
tariff; that although it has had but little over a year of 
unparalleled commercial disaster to test it, it must be altered 
now. Well, I know not what you can get now. I know 
not whether gentlemen here are ready to eat their own words. 
I have seen a great many strange sights in my time. I am 
not ready to do it. I believed at the time it was a wise act; 
I believe so now. I believe it gave fully as much protection 
to American industry as ought to be given. . . . 

" A great majority of the Southern people believe that every 
burden you impose, every percentage you lay, is injurious 
to their interests. It certainly enhances the prices of all 
articles they consume. Still they say they are willing to 
make that concession, for common interests, and for com- 
mon glory." * 

Upon many other matters in the Senate routine, which 
cannot be treated within the limits of the present volume, 
Toombs's non-sectional services were equally sound, patri- 
otic and striking. This phase of his career has been char- 
acterized with justifiable enthusiasm by Col. Reed as 
follows: t 

"He challenged every bad and defended every good meas- 
ure. He is on record both by speech, nearly always hitting 
the nail on the head, and by vote, nearly always right, upon 
every one. . . . The alert and intelligent vigilance which 
he gives every measure proposed seems superior to that of 
all his colleagues. They acknowledge this by the many 

* Congressional Globe, 3Sth. Cong., 2d. sess., pp. 902, 903. 
t John C. Reed, The Brothers' War, pp. 234-251, passim. (Copyrighted 
by Little, Brown & Co.) 



A SENATOR IN THE FIFTIES 151 

inquiries they make of him for information as to pending 
bills. . , . He shows a Hke readiness upon facts of history 
— especially English and American — on clauses of the Con- 
stitution, or statutes or treaties, provisions of the law of 
nations, principles of political economy, institutions, commer- 
cial systems, customs of particular nations, and all such 
topics as may illustrate the pending question, however sud- 
denly it may have arisen. And so he discusses every matter, 
grave or trivial, with perfect grasp of the proposition sub- 
mitted, and with fullness of knowledge and understanding. 
He avoids strained and over-ingenious reasoning. Plain 
and safe men never disparaged his arguments by calling 
them hair-splitting or metaphysical. But though he took his 
stand upon the palpable meaning of undisputed facts and the 
most plainly applicable doctrines of reason and justice, he 
displayed an unparalleled power of formulating in intelligi- 
ble and striking words the key principles of common affairs. 
This gift always found instant appreciation with practical 
men, and they admired it as genius. Though he has his eye 
ever open to principle he is the very opposite of the mere 
doctrinaire. He is practical, and always pushing business 
on except when the bills for depleting the treasury — to use 
his favorite name for them — are up and likely to pass 
because of the coalition between the opposition and the 
fishy Democrats, which he is always exposing with exhaust- 
less variety of language. Only then he prefers to do nothing. 
As to his own measures, he changes words, accepts amend- 
ments — in short, makes every concession which will give 
him the substance of his desire. ... In important debate 
he is conspicuously the strongest man in the Senate. . . . 

"Many have been superior to Toombs in making perfect 
orations, but it is hard to find in any deliberative body a 
match for him as a debater. Charles Fox was a giant; but 
he did not have the strength, the grip, the never remitted 
activity, the infinite thrust, the parry, illustration, wit, 
epigram, and invincible appeal to conscience, feeling and 
reason — in short, the complete supply and command of all 
resources that marked Toombs as foremost in the pancra- 
tiurh of parliamentary discussion. It ought to add inex- 
pressible brightness to his fame that he sought for no tri- 
umphs except those of justice and good policy. He was far 
more than a mere logician in debate. His brilliant snatches, 



152 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

his sudden uprisings, his thawing humor and flashing wit — 
all these did their parts as effectively in winning favor and 
working suasion as his array of facts and his ratiocination 
did theirs in convincing. He was too prone to use harsh 
language towards the other side. There are many places 
in his speeches where I wish he had used soft instead of 
bitter words, . . . Yet in spite of his occasional vehemence 
and acrimonious language, he seems to have the respect 
and regard of even his most decided political opponents. 
Wade and he recognized each the great merit of the other. 
Once after applauding his honesty and his frankness, Toombs 
says of him: 'He and I can agree about everything upon 
earth until we get to our sable population, I do believe.' 
(March 22, 1858.) Wade had already said this of Toombs: 
*I commend the bold and direct manner in which the Senator 
from Georgia always attacks his opponents.' (February 28, 
1857.) February 8, 1858, Fessenden said, 'I am very happy 
to get that admission from the Senator from Georgia, It is 
made with his customary frankness and clearness.' Hale 
also respects him. January 23, 1857, he says that Toombs 
ought to have been on the bench, complimenting his desire 
for justice and fairness as well as his legal ability. The 
Northern Democrat Simmons loves to praise him, as is evi- 
denced by what he says, June 2, 1858, February 9, 1859, and 
June 23, i860. Such unsought and spontaneous commen- 
dations of the great Southern partisan by Northern men dur- 
ing the heat of sectional agitation are extraordinarily strong 
proofs of his high character as well as great genius. . . . 

"Taking popularity at its exact worth; candid and frank 
to the extreme; contented in the course dictated by his 
judgment and conscience though opposed by his people or 
party and his own private interests; in no bargains with 
men nor smirching connections with women, doing nothing 
in secret which if published would bring a blush; elevated 
above the amiable weaknesses of unwise benevolence, ever 
championing with all his powers the righteous cause of the 
weak and unpopular — as exampled in his maintaining the 
claims of certain persons in Louisiana to the Houmas land 
against the formidable opposition of the two Senators from 
that state, in his extraordinarily eloquent appeal for the 
naval officers retired without a hearing, in his heroic endeavor 
to have his party seat the Republican Harlan; incorruptible 



A SENATOR IN THE FIFTIES 153 

and really consistent forever and always — when he is 
scrutinized as a public man his character rises into a grand- 
eur of unselfishness, firmness of high purpose, honesty, and 
power to show and do the right, almost superhuman. . . . 

"Of all his peers he was most at home in the ways and 
principles which dictate proper legislation as to trade and 
business. . . . Ponder these stout-hearted and golden words 
of his: . . . 'Whenever the system shall be firmly estab- 
lished that the states are to enter into a miserable scramble 
for the most money for their local appropriations, and that 
Senator is to be regarded the ablest representative of his 
state who can get for it the largest slice of the treasury, 
from that day public honor and property are gone, and all 
the states are disgraced and degraded.' (February 27, 1857.) 
. . . He sees that the appropriations for harbors, rivers, 
lighthouses, private claims, pensions, etc., are almost as 
baneful as was the distribution of corn to the Roman popu- 
lace; and yet the people everywhere are eager for the cor- 
rupting gifts. Against his party, against many of this 
section, he fights alone and single-handed, reminding of 
Horatio's keeping the bridge against the Etruscan host. 
Though always outvoted, he behaves with spirit and dignity. 
Either he, or some one of the faithful few who act with him 
in the slim minority, always have the yeas and nays recorded. 
His grand purpose was to appeal to the American people 
upon an issue involving the article of his creed which he had 
held up with so much puissance and fidelity in days of evil 
report. These words contain the motto of the long contest 
which occupied all of his non-sectional career in the Senate: 
'I think every one of these bills should be considered. I 
do not wish to have them considered in such a manner as 
improperly to occupy the time of the Senate. I desire to 
spread before the country reasonable information. That 
is the only purpose we can have now, because the combina- 
tion is sufficient to carry everything that the committee 
report. But there is a day of reckoning to come; and I 
trust that those who support this system will be called to 
judgment. I desire the truth to go to the honest people all 
over the country. Let the taxpayers look at this matter; let 
the jobbers beware. "To your tents, O Israel.'" (July 29, 
1856.) 

" The sectional agitation, mounting higher and higher, as 



154 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

Toombs said often, blinded the people to this great subject. 
Secession came, and his state — to him the only sovereign 
— called the solitary combatant away from the ground that 
ought to be kept forever in loving memory for his long, 
desperate, thrice-valiant stand." 



CHAPTER VII 
TOOMBS ON THE SLAVEHOLDING RE'GIME 

THE same promptings of conscience and patriotism 
which made Toombs a champion of justice and honesty 
and the national interests made him at the same time a 
champion of state rights and the right of the Southern 
community to determine its own institutions. The valor 
with which he supported the petitions of the aggrieved naval 
officers was the same as that which he used in vindicating 
the claims of the South for security against the operations 
of the "underground railroad" and the agitations of the 
abolitionists. 

Toombs was himself the owner of a large and prosperous 
plantation in southwestern Georgia which he visited with 
great relish as often as his congressional duties, his law 
practise and his campaigning activities permitted; and he 
was in intimate touch with all the industrial and social 
phases of the Southern problem of race relations. In 
endorsement of the institution of negro slavery under the 
existing conditions he put himself upon record in addresses 
on two public occasions, the first as part of the Commence- 
ment exercises of Emory College at Oxford, Ga., July 20, 
1853; the second, in Tremont Temple, Boston, Mass., 
January 24, 1856. The latter* was in large part a repetition 
of the former, prefaced by a review of the political strife of 
the sections. The former is selected for the reprinting of 
extracts here because of the extreme rarity of the pamphlet 

* Published in M. W. Clusky, Political Text-book, pp. 571-582; A. H. 
Stephens, War Between the States, I, 625-647. 



156 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

in which alone it was published.* Omitting his sketch of 
the early history of slavery, some statistical arguments, a 
censure upon the policy of Great Britain, and some local 
allusions, the address was as follows: 

" Public opinion has always been a recognised element in 
directing the affairs of the world, and many causes have 
combined in our day to increase its strength and power. 
The more general diffusion of education, the increased 
facilities of personal intercourse, the rapidity with which 
ideas and intelligence may be transmitted, and a more gen- 
eral agreement among mankind as to the standard by which 
man and all of his acts ought to be tried, have made this 
power formidable beyond all former precedent in the world's 
history. Its jurisdiction seems to be universal, circum- 
scribed by no limits, bounded by no recognised land marks; 
it invades the sanctuaries of the Most High and questions 
his oracles — enters the palaces of kings and rulers, and the 
homes of the people, and summons all to answer at its bar. 
Being but the judgment of fallible man, it can claim no 
exemption from his errors, his frailties, his ignorance, or 
passions, yet being mischievous even in its errors, it is not 
wise or safe to disregard it. 

" Before this tribunal our social and political system is 
arraigned, and we are summoned to answer. It is my pur- 
pose, today, to respond to the summons. I consider the 
occasion not inappropriate. The investigative discussion 
and decision of social questions are no longer confined to 
legislative halls and political assemblies of the people. The 
secluded halls of science already resound with the notes of 
controversy on the subject. . . . 

" For nearly twenty years our domestic enemies have strug- 
gled by pen and speech to excite discontent among the white 
race, and insurrection among the black; their efforts have 
shaken the national government to its deep foundation, 
and bursted the bonds of Christian unity in our land. Yet 

* Robert Toombs, An Oration delivered before the Few and Phi Gamma 
Societies of Emory College: Slavery in the United States; its consistency with 
republican institutions, and its effects upon the slave and society. Augusta, 
Ga., 1853. The only copy found by the writer is in the Boston PubHc 
Library. 



THE SLAVEHOLDING REGIME 157 

the objects of their attacks — the slaveholding states — 
reposing in the confidence of their strength, have scarcely 
felt the shock. In glancing over the civilized world, the eye 
rests upon not a single spot where all classes of society are 
so well content with their social system, or have greater 
reason to be so, than in the slaveholding states of the Ameri- 
can Union. Stability, progress, order, peace, content and 
prosperity reign throughout our borders. Not a single 
soldier is to be found in our widely extended domain to 
overawe or protect society. The desire for organic change 
nowhere manifests itself. These great social and political 
blessings are not the results of accident, but the results of a 
wise, just and humane republican system. It is my purpose 
to vindicate the wisdom, humanity, and justice of this system, 
to show that the position of the African race in it is consist- 
ent with its principles, advantageous to that race and society. 
• "African slavery existed in all the colonies at the com- 
mencement of the Revolution. The paramount authority 
of the crown, with or without the consent of the colonies, 
had introduced and legalised it; it was inextricably inter- 
woven with the very framework of society, especially in the 
Southern States. The question was not presented to us 
whether it was just or beneficial to the African or advanta- 
geous to us to tear him away by force or fraud from bondage 
in his own country and place him in a like condition in ours. 
England and the Christian world had long since settled that 
question for us. At the final overthrow of British authority 
in these states our ancestors found seven hundred thousand 
of the African race among them in bondage, concentrated 
from the nature of our climate and production chiefly in the 
present slaveholding states. It became their duty to 
establish governments over the country from which their 
valour had driven out British authority. They entered 
upon this great work, profoundly impressed with the truth 
that that government was best which secured the greatest 
happiness possible to the whole society, and adopted consti- 
tutional republics as the best mode to secure that great end 
of human society. They incorporated no Utopian theories 
in their system. Starting from the point that each state 
was sovereign and embodied the collective will and power 
of its whole people, they affirmed its right and duty to define 
and fix as well as protect and defend the rights of each 



158 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

individual member of the state and to hold all individual 
rights as subordinate to the great interests of the whole 
society. This last proposition is the corner stone of repub- 
lican government, which must be stricken out before the 
legal status of the African race among us can be shown to be 
inconsistent with its principles. The question with the 
builders up of our system of government was not what rights 
man might have in a state of nature, but what rights he 
ought to have in a state of society. . . . 

"The slaveholders, acting upon these principles, finding 
the Africans already among them in slavery, unfit to be 
intrusted with political power, and incapable as freemen of 
either securing their own happiness or promoting the public 
prosperity, recognised their condition as slaves and sub- 
jected it to legal control. The justice and policy of this 
decision have both been greatly questioned, and both must 
depend upon the soundness of the assumptions upon which 
it was based. I hold that they were sound and true, and 
that the African is unfit to be intrusted with political power 
and incapable as a freeman of securing his own happiness 
or contributing to the public prosperity, and that whenever 
the two races co-exist a state of slavery is best for him and 
for society. And under it in our country he is in a better 
condition than any he has ever attained in any other age and 
country, either in bondage or freedom. . . . 

"Very soon after the discovery and settlement of America, 
the policy of the Christian world bought large numbers of 
their people of their savage masters and countrymen, and 
imported them into the Western World. Here we are 
enabled to view them under different and far more favorable 
conditions. In Hayti, by the encouragement of the French 
government, after a long probation of slavery, they became 
free; and, led on by the valour and conduct of the mixed 
breeds, aided by overpowering numbers, they massacred the 
small number of whites who inhabited the island, and suc- 
ceeded to the undisputed sway of the finest island in the 
West Indies under the highest state of cultivation. Their 
condition in Hayti left nothing to be desired for the most 
favorable experiment of the capacity of the race for self- 
government and civilization. This experiment has now 
been tested for sixty years, and its results are before the 
world. A war of races began the moment the fear of foreign 



THE SLAVEHOLDING REGIME 159 

invasion ceased, and resulted in the extermination of the 
greater number of the mulattoes who had rescued them from 
the dominion of the whites. Revolutions, tumults and 
disorders have been the ordinary pastimes of the emanci- 
pated blacks; production has almost ceased, and their 
stock of civilization acquired in slavery has become already 
exhausted, and they are now scarcely distinguishable from 
the tribes from which they were torn in their native land. 
"More recently the same experiment has been tried in 
Jamaica under the auspices of England. . , . The island of 
Jamaica was one of the most beautiful, productive, and 
prosperous of the British colonial possessions. England, 
deceived by the theories of her speculative philanthropists 
into the opinion that free blacks would be more productive 
laborers than slaves, in 1838 proclaimed total emancipation 
of the black race in Jamaica. Her arms and her power have 
watched over and protected them; not only the interest but 
the absolute necessities of the white proprietors of the land 
compelled them to offer every inducement and stimulant 
to industry, yet the experiment stands before the world a 
confessed failure. Ruin has overwhelmed the proprietors; 
and the negro, true to his nationality, buries himself in filth, 
and sloth, and crime. In the United States, too, we have 
peculiar opportunities for studying the African race under 
different conditions. Here we find him in slavery; here we 
find him also a freeman in the slaveholding and in the non- 
slaveholding states. The best specimens of the free blacks 
to be found are in the Southern States, in the closest contact 
with slavery and subject to many of its restraints. Upon 
the theory of the abolitionists the most favorable condition 
in which you can view the free negro is in the non-slave- 
holding states of the Union; there we ought to expect to 
find him displaying all the capability of his race for improve- 
ment, in a temperate climate, among an active, industrious, 
and ingenious people, surrounded by sympathising friends 
and mild and just and equal institutions. If he fails here, 
surely it can be chargeable to nothing but himself. He has 
had seventy years to cleanse himself and his race from the 
leprosy of slavery, yet what is his condition to-day? He is 
lord of himself, but he finds it *a heritage of woe.' After 
seventy years of probation among themselves, the Northern 
states, acting upon the same principles of self-protection 



l6o THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

which has marked our policy, declare him unfit to enjoy 
the rights and perform the duties of citizenship. Denied 
social equality by an irreversible law of nature, and political 
rights by municipal law, incapable of maintaining an unequal 
struggle with a superior race, the melancholy history of his 
career of freedom is here most usually found recorded in 
criminal courts, jails, poor-houses, and penitentiaries. The 
authentic statistics of crime and poverty show an amount 
of misery and crime among the free blacks out of all propor- 
tion to their numbers when compared to any class of the 
white race. This fact has had itself recognised in the most 
decisive manner throughout the Northern states. No town, 
or city, or state, encourages their immigration; many of 
them discourage it by political legislation; and some of the 
non-slaveholding states have absolutely prohibited their 
entry into their borders, under any circumstances whatever. 
If the Northern states which adopt this policy deny the truth 
of the principles upon which our policy is built and main- 
tained, they are guilty of a most cruel injury to an unhappy 
race. They do admit it, and expel them from their borders 
and drive them out as wanderers and outcasts. The result 
of this policy is everywhere apparent. The statistics of 
population supply the evidence of their condition. In the 
non-slaveholding states their annual increase during the 
last ten years has been but little over one per cent., even with 
the additions of fugitives from labor and emancipated slaves 
from the South, clearly showing that in this their most 
favored condition when left to themselves they are barely 
capable of maintaining their existence, and with the prospect 
of a denser population and greater competition in labor for 
employment consequent thereon they are in danger of be- 
coming extinct. The Southern States, acting upon the same 
admitted fact, keep them in the condition in which we found 
them, protect them against themselves and compel them to 
contribute to their own and the public interest and welfare. 
That our system does promote the well-being of the African 
race subject to it and the public interest I shall now proceed 
to show by facts which are open to all men and can be 
neither controverted or denied. . . . 

"Our political system gives the slave great and valuable 
rights. His life is equally protected with that of his master, 
his person is secure from assault against all others except 



THE SLAVEHOLDING REGIME i6i 

his master, and his power in this respect is placed under 
salutary restraints. He is entitled by law to ample food and 
clothing and exempted from excessive labor, and when no 
longer capable of labor, in old age or disease, his comfortable 
maintenance is a legal charge upon his master. We know 
that these rights are, in the main, faithfully secured to him. 
. . . But these legal rights of the slave embrace but a 
small portion of the privileges actually enjoyed by him. 
The nature of the relation of master and slave begets kind- 
nesses, imposes duties (and secures their performance), 
which exist in no other relation of capital and labor. In- 
terest and humanity cooperate in harmony for the well-being 
of our laborers. A striking evidence of this fact is found in 
our religious statistics. While religious instruction is not 
enjoined by law in all the states, the number of slaves who 
are in communion with the different churches abundantly 
proves the universality of their enjoyment of religious 
privileges. And a learned clergyman in New York has 
recently shown from the records of our evangelical churches 
that a greater number of African slaves in the United States 
have enjoyed and are enjoying the consolations of religion 
than the combined efforts of all the Christian churches have 
been able to redeem from the heathen world since the intro- 
duction of slavery among us. . . . 

"It is objected that our slaves are debarred educational 
advantages. The objection is well taken, but is without 
great force; their station in society makes education neither 
necessary nor useful. . . . 

"We are reproached that the marriage relation is neither 
recognised nor protected by law. This reproach is not 
wholly unjust, this is an evil not yet remedied by law, but 
marriage is not inconsistent with the institution of slavery 
as it exists among us, and the objection therefore lies rather 
to an incident than to the essence of the system. But even 
in this we have deprived the slave of no pre-existing right. 
We found the race without any knowledge of or regard for 
the institution of marriage, and we are reproached for not 
having as yet secured that and all other blessings of civiliza- 
tion. The separation of families is much relied on by the 
abolitionsts in Europe and America. Some of the slave- 
holding states have already made partial provision against 
this evil, and all of them may do so; but the objection is 



l62 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

far more formidable in theory than practice, even without 
legislative interposition. 

"The tendency of slave labor is to aggregation — of free 
labor to dispersion. The accidents of life, the desire to 
better one's condition, and the pressure of want (the proud 
man's contumely and oppressor's wrong) produce infinitely 
a greater amount of separation in families of the white 
races than that which ever happened to the slave. This 
is true everywhere, even in the United States where the 
general condition of the people is prosperous. But it is 
still more marked in Europe. The injustice and despotism 
of England to Ireland has produced more separation of 
Irish families and sundered more domestic ties within the 
last ten years than slavery has effected since its introduction 
into the United States. The twenty millions of freemen in 
the United States are living witnesses to the dispersive 
injustice of the old world. And today England is purchas- 
ing coolies in India and apprentices in Africa to redeem 
her West India possessions from the folly of emancipation. 
What securities has she thrown around the family altars of 
these miserable savages? It is in vain to call this separa- 
tion voluntary — if it were true that fact mitigates none 
of its evils. But it is the result of a necessity as stern, 
inexorable and irresistible, as the physical force which brings 
the slave from Virginia to Georgia. 

" But the monster objection to our institution of slavery in 
the estimation of its opponents is that wages are withheld 
from labor — the force of the objection is lost in its want 
of truth. An examination of the true theory of wages will 
expose its fallacy. Under the system of free labor wages 
are paid in money, the representative of products, in ours 
in products themselves. If we pay, in the comforts of life, 
more than the free laborer's pecuniary wages will buy, then 
our laborer is paid higher wages than the free laborer. The 
Parliamentary Reports in England show that the wages of 
agricultural and unskilled labor in Great Britain not only 
fail to furnish the laborer with the comforts of the slave, 
but even with the necessaries of life, and no slaveholder in 
Georgia could escape a conviction for cruelty to his slaves , 
who exacted from them the same amount of labor, for the 
same compensation in the necessaries of life, which noble- 
men and gentlemen of England pay their free laborers. 



THE SLAVEHOLDING REGIME 163 

Under their system man has become less valuable and less 
cared for than their domestic animals; and noble Dukes 
will depopulate whole districts of men to supply their places 
with sheep, and then with intrepid audacity lecture and 
denounce American slaveholders. 

"The great conflict between labor and capital under free 
competition has ever been how the earnings of labor shall 
be divided between it and capital. In new and sparsely 
settled countries where land is cheap and food is easily pro- 
duced and education and intelligence approximate equality, 
labor can struggle successfully in this warfare with capital. 
But this is an exceptional and temporary condition of 
society. In the old world this state of things has long since 
passed away and the conflict with the lower grades of labor 
has long since ceased. There the compensation of unskilled 
labor, which first succumbs to capital, is reduced to a point 
scarcely adequate to the continuance of the race. . . . Here 
the portion due the slave is a charge upon the whole product 
of capital and upon the capital itself. It is neither depend- 
ant upon seasons nor subject to accidents, and survives his 
own capacity for labor and even the ruin of his master. 
The general happiness, cheerfulness, and contentment of the 
slaves compare favorably with that of laborers in any other 
age or country. They require no standing armies to enforce 
their obedience, while the evidences of discontent and the 
appliance of force to repress it are everywhere visible among 
the toiling millions of the earth. Even in the Northern 
states of this Union strikes and mobs and labor unions and 
combinations against employers attest at once the misery 
and discontent of labor among them. . . . 

"That the condition of the slave offers great opportunities 
for abuse is true, that these opportunities are frequently 
used to violate justice and humanity, is also true. But 
our laws restrain these abuses and punish these crimes 
in this as well as in all the other relations of life. They 
who assume it as a fundamental principle in the constitu- 
tion of man that abuse is the unvarying concomitant of 
power and crime of opportunity, subvert the foundations 
of all private morals and of every social system. Nowhere 
does this principle find a nobler refutation than in the treat- 
ment of the African race by Southern slaveholders. And 
we may with hope and confidence safely leave to them the 



i64 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

removal of the existing abuses under which it now labors 
and such further ameliorations of its condition as may be 
demanded by justice and humanity. His condition is not 
permanent among us, and we may find his exodus in the 
unvarying laws of population. Under the conditions of 
labor in England and the continent of Europe slavery could 
not exist here or anywhere else. The moment wages 
descend to a point barely sufficient to support the laborer 
and his family capital cannot afford to own labor, and slavery 
instantly ceases. Slavery ceased in England in obedience 
to this law, and not from any regard to liberty or humanity. 
The increase of population will produce the same result 
in this country, and American slavery, like that of England, 
will find its euthanasy in the general prostration of all labor. 

"The next aspect in which I propose to view this question 
is its effects upon the interests of the slaveholding states 
themselves. The great argument by which slavery was 
formerly assailed was that it was a dear, unprofitable and 
unproductive labor; it was held that the slave himself would 
be a more productive member of society as a freeman than 
in bondage. The results of emancipation in the British 
and French West India Islands have not only disproven but 
annihilated this theory. . . . 

"Here the labor of the country is united with and pro- 
tected by its capital, directed by the educated and intelligent, 
secured against its own weakness, waste and follyj asso- 
ciated in such form as to give the greatest efficiency in 
production and the least cost of maintenance. Each indi- 
vidual laborer of the North is the victim not only of his 
folly and extravagance but of his ignorance, misfgrtunes 
and necessities. His isolation enlarges his expenses without 
increasing his comforts, his want of capital increases the 
price of everything he buys, disables him from supplying 
his wants at favorable times or on advantageous terms 
and throws him in the hands of retailers and extortioners. 
But labor united with capital, directed by skill, forecast 
and intelligence, while it is capable of its highest production, 
is freed from these evils, leaves a margin both for increased 
comforts to the laborer and additional profits to capital. 
This is the explanation of the seeming paradox. 

"The opponents of slavery, true to their monomania that 
it is the sum of all evils and crimes, in spite of all history, 



THE SLAVEHOLDING REGIME 165 

sacred and profane, ancient or modern, all facts and all 
truth, insist that its effect on the commonwealth is to ener- 
vate it, demoralise it, and render it incapable of advance- 
ment and a high civilization, and upon the citizen to debase 
him morally, physically and intellectually. Such is neither 
the truth of history, sacred or profane, nor the experience of 
our own past or present. . . . Such is our social system and 
such our condition under it. Its political wisdom is vindi- 
cated by its effects on society, its morality by the practices 
of the Patriarchs and the teachings of the Apostles; we 
submit it to the judgment of the civilized world with the 
firm conviction that the adoption of no other system under 
our circumstances would have exhibited the individual man 
(bond or free) in a high development, or society in a happier 
civilization." 

In his Tremont Temple address Toombs inserted an 
argument which was too obvious in the minds of Georgians 
to require mention by him at home but which in spite of its 
truth and vital importance was never given attention by 
the foes of the existing Southern regime. He said: "The 
question is not whether we could not be more prosperous 
and happy with these three and a half million slaves in 
Africa, and their places filled with an equal number of 
hardy, intelligent and enterprising citizens of the superior 
race; but it is simply whether, while we have them among 
us, we would be most prosperous with them in freedom or 
in bondage." 

There were fallacies in both of these addresses, but they 
were fallacies almost universally upheld by the Southern 
community, and they were less vital and dangerous falla- 
cies than those committed by Helper and the abolitionist 
school on the one hand and those of the advocates of reopen- 
ing the African slave-trade on the other. Toombs considered 
that the importation of an additional mass of crude Africans 
would merely increase the disadvantages under which the 
South was laboring; but as regards the negro mass already 
on hand, impossible to remove by any available means, 



i66 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

he held that a Hberahzed type of slavery was the best means 
of adjusting them to the community of the whites; and he 
necessarily held that the reform of the Southern black codes 
ought to be left for accomplishment by the voluntary action 
of the Southern states after sufficiently quiet times should 
have been restored for constructive work to be undertaken. 



CHAPTER VIII 
THE ELECTION OF 1860 

WHEN the Constitutional Union party of 1850 in 
Georgia failed to secure national recognition, its 
component parts fell back, as we have seen in an earlier 
chapter, into their former Whig and Democratic alignments. 
The Whigs as well as the Democrats found some difficulty 
in their work of reorganization. To heal the schism among 
the Georgia Whigs and hearten them for the attempt to 
restore the strength of their party, a master hand was needed. 
Toombs furnished this. In the state convention of the party 
at Milledgeville, June 21, 1853, he took full control. In a 
key-note speech he denounced Pierce for appointing Free- 
soilers to office, proclaimed anew his own devotion to the 
resistance plank in the Georgia Platform, and deprecated 
all fear of protective tariffs and national banking in case 
the Whig party at large should regain control.* He then 
caused the convention to nominate for the governorship 
Charles J. Jenkins, who was doubtless the strongest candidate 
available. Toombs then canvassed the state in Jenkins's 
behalf, and for a while seemed likely to carry it. Jenkins, 
however, committed a blunder by calling himself a Unionist 
rather than a Whig, and was defeated by Herschel V. John- 
son, the Democratic nominee, by about 500 majority. 

The hope of a country-wide rehabilitation of the Whig 
party was soon blasted, for when the Northern Whigs in 
Congress unanimously opposed the Kansas-Nebraska bill, 
the party became wrecked beyond the hope of repair. The 

* Federal Union, June 14, 21 and 28, 1853. 



l68 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

more pronounced of the anti-slavery Whigs soon joined the 
incipient Republican party; and the remaining Whigs con- 
fronted the three alternatives of entering the secret lodges 
of the anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant Know-nothing 
("American") party, or joining the Democrats, or con- 
tinuing as a forlorn Whig remnant. Toombs and Stephens 
promptly rejected the first of these three, but were for a 
while in a dilemma between the last two. The situation 
and prospect at the end of 1854 were described by Howell 
Cobb in a letter to James Buchanan, December 5, 1854: 

"As you have seen, the Democratic party has been literally 
slaughtered in the Northern, Middle and Western states, 
whilst of the Whig party there is not left even a monumental 
remembrance. ... I cannot but feel that 1856 will see 
an overwhelming reaction in the public mind. Whether 
it should be so or not depends in a great measure upon the 
course of policy of the Democratic party. At present it 
would seem that the presidential contest of 1856 will be 
between the National Democratic party on the one hand, 
and on the other two sectional parties, a Northern one 
headed probably by Seward and a Southern one possibly 
by Toombs. This will certainly be the fight unless the 
Whigs should become partly nationalized through the instru- 
mentality of the 'Know-nothings,' of which there is some 
chance." 

While Cobb*s description was correct his prophecy was 
fallacious. In May and June, 1855, Stephens and Toombs 
issued public letters in response to inquiries, denouncing 
Know-nothingism; * and while Stephens for a season declared 
his independence of all party affiliations, Toombs concluded 
his anti- Know-nothing letter as follows: 

"The true policy of the South is to unite; to lay aside 
all party division. Whigs, Democrats and Know-nothings 
should come together and combine for the common safety. 
If we are wise enough to do this, to present one unbroken 
column of fifteen states for the preservation of their own 

* Federal Union, May 22 and June 19, 1855. 



THE ELECTION OF 1860 169 

rights, the Constitution and the Union, and to uphold and 
support that noble band of patriots in the North who have 
stood for the Constitution and the right against the tempest 
of fanaticism, folly and treason which has assailed them, 
we shall succeed. We shall then have conquered a peace 
which will be enduring, and by means which will not invite 
further aggression." 

Since nearly all the remaining Northern friends of Southern 
policy were Democrats, this letter indicated that Toombs 
was drifting toward the Democratic alignment. The 
letter was written on the eve of his departure from America 
on a brief tour with his family in England and Europe. 
Upon his return in the fall he hastened back to Georgia to 
support the Democratic nominees for the governorship and 
the legislature; and thereafter he, and Stephens likewise, 
were permanent members of the Democratic party. These 
two "inseparables" together with Howell Cobb were the 
principal figures in a "Democratic and anti-Know-nothing 
massmeeting" at Milledgeville during the session of the 
legislature, November 8, 1855, at which the policy of the 
Georgia Democracy was determined for the presidential 
campaign of 1856. After endorsing the fourth resolution 
of the Georgia Platform, it resolved that delegates should 
be sent to the Cincinnati convention under instructions to 
affiliate with no delegates who should not approve the 
recognition of the Kansas-Nebraska act, and to oppose any 
anti-slavery restriction whatever in the territories. The 
state Democratic convention which met on January 15 did 
little but ratify the actions of that massmeeting and appoint 
delegates to Cincinnati.* 

Toombs, having as usual no favors to ask and having little 
preference as between the Democratic aspirants, took no 
part in the nomination. But in the popular campaign in 
the summer and fall of 1856 he was far from passive. He 

* Federal Union, Nov. 13, 1855, and Jan. 22, 1856. 



I70 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

wrote on July 8 to a Virginia friend: "The election of Fre- 
mont would be the end of the Union, and ought to be. The 
object of Fremont's friends is the conquest of the South. 
I am content that they shall own us when they conquer us, 
but not before." * And he expressed himself similarly on 
the stump, t The surest means of defeating Fremont, so 
far as the Southern vote was concerned, was to prevent 
Fillmore, the Know-nothing candidate, from carrying South- 
ern states. Toombs accordingly campaigned in Georgia 
against the Fillmore ticket and was largely instrumental in 
procuring for Buchanan the heavy majority of 14,000 votes 
in the state. 

When the new administration assumed office Toombs 
declined a diplomatic mission, deeming that his services 
were more needed at home than abroad. For a time he 
was concerned in persuading Buchanan to take steps for 
acquiring Cuba; but the wranglings which Robert J. Walker 
precipitated as governor of Kansas soon diverted all atten- 
tion to that territory again, and brought the beginning of 
the final rift in the Democratic party. Douglas endorsed 
Walker as a promoter of squatter sovereignty pure and 
simple. Toombs, Stephens, Davis and others of the South 
denounced Walker and proclaimed the doctrine of non- 
intervention as against that of squatter sovereignty. That 
is to say, they contended that neither Congress nor the 
inhabitants had a right to exclude slave^ property so long as 
the territorial status should continue, though upon the erec- 
tion of the territory into a state the inhabitants could of 
course prescribe institutions at will through their consti- 
tutional convention. Buchanan, after a period of hesitation, 
took the side of the Southerners; but Democratic harmony 
had fled, and with it the prospect of constructive policy. 

* Rhodes, History of the United States, II, 204, 205, quoting from the 
New York Tribune, Aug. 13, 1856. 
t Stovall, Toombs, p. 151. 



THE ELECTION OF 1860 171 

In state politics the year 1857 marked the rise into con- 
spicuous position of two fresh leaders, Benjamin H. Hill 
and Joseph E. Brown, rival candidates for the governorship. 
Hill, a brilliant and vehement orator, was prominent partly 
because of the dearth of other talented men among the 
Georgia Know-nothings. Brown, a plain, sober, shrewd 
and vigorous man of affairs, on the other hand owed his 
nomination to the fact that in the Democratic convention 
there were so many strong candidates for the nomination, 
not including Brown, that a deadlock arose which could 
be broken only by the bringing in of a "dark horse." Since 
his brief term in the Georgia senate, which we have already 
noticed, he had managed his small farm and practised law 
in rugged northern Georgia, and then served as a judge on 
the northern circuit. He was easily elected governor in 1857, 
and promptly began to display such administrative talent 
and to show himself so thoroughly representative of the 
character and views of the sturdy yeomanry of the state 
that the custom of gubernational rotation was abandoned 
and he was kept in the office steadily through the remaining 
ante-bellum years and the whole period of the war. Upon 
the Federal and Confederate relations of the state his posi- 
tion was throughout his administration, as we shall see, 
virtually identical with that of Toombs. At the time of 
Brown's nomination Toombs was away on a horseback trip 
in Texas to inspect a ninety-thousand-acre tract which he 
had bought near Fort Worth and to negotiate with the 
squatters thereon. "Who the devil is Joe Brown?" he is 
reported to have said upon hearing of the nomination. 
Hastening back to Georgia, he was glad to learn that Brown's 
talents and opinions were eminently satisfactory. Toombs 
lent a hand vigorously in the campaign, and was himself 
elected by the legislature in November, by a great majority, 
for a second term in the Senate. 

Events now diverted public attention wholly from state 



172 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

to national politics. The assertion of the Supreme Court 
in the Dred Scott case, delivered in March, 1857, that 
slavery could not be prohibited in any territory by any 
constitutional means whatever, was taken at the South as 
a vindication of the poHcy of aggressive defense; but at 
the North it was coldly disapproved by a great number of 
Democrats and hotly denounced by the Republicans. In 
1858 the debates in Congress over the Lecompton constitu- 
tion for Kansas and over the proposed acquisition of Cuba, 
together with the Lincoln-Douglas joint debates on the stump 
in Illinois, made clearer than before the divergence of sec- 
tional views and policies. In October the echoing of Lin- 
coln's house-divided-against-itself speech by Seward in his 
irrepressible-conflict speech at Rochester, together with the 
sweeping Republican victories in former Democratic North- 
ern states in the congressional elections, increased the 
Southern apprehensions of impending oppression at the hands 
of the overpowering North. 

Davis and Brown, the Senators from Mississippi, were 
the chief spokesmen of Southern defiance in Congress, But 
more important than congressional occurrences at the time 
was the popular campaign which William L. Yancey now 
opened afresh for Southern independence. In a speech in 
the Southern Commercial Congress at Montgomery in May, 
1858, he lamented that procrastination so abounded. All 
the existing sectional issues combined, said he, "may yet 
produce spirit enough to lead us forward, to call forth a 
Lexington, to fight a Bunker Hill, to drive the foe from the 
city of our rights," He thought it better to secede at once 
than to wait for the election of a Republican President. He 
continued: "My learned colleague says wait; the gentle- 
man from Virginia says wait. This everlasting waiting is 
the destruction of opportunity." To promote his purpose 
Yancey proposed the organization of committees of safety 
throughout the cotton states to keep the cause alive and 



THE ELECTION OF 1860 173 

to provide concert of action when conditions should become 
ripe for a stroke for independence.* This proposal, however, 
received no general endorsement. In Georgia a news- 
paper entitled the Southern Confederacy was established 
at Atlanta at the beginning of 1859, committed to the doc- 
trine of state sovereignty in fullest measure and to the 
policies of admitting Kansas only as a slave state, of legaliz- 
ing the African slave-trade, and of acquiring Mexico, Central 
America and the West Indies. But the people of Georgia 
declined to support these aggressive policies and they allowed 
this journal to languish with slight patronage. The people 
preferred to look to their own chosen watchmen for warnings 
and advice, and all the party leaders in the state were agreed 
for the time in counseling against sectional agitation. Some 
were hopeful and some were hoping against hope, but all 
were disposed to keep the South quiet for the while in order 
to prevent her interests, so much as possible, from being 
tossed about in the intrigues of Northern politicians. 

Buchanan and his allies had laid a plan to destroy Douglas's 
presidential prospects for i860 by causing the Charleston 
convention to insert a non-intervention plank in its plat- 
form, embodying the Dred Scott doctrine as against that 
of squatter sovereignty. Both Toombs and Stephens, 
distrusting Buchanan personally and impressed by recent 
Democratic disasters, deprecated Buchanan's war upon 
Douglas as tending to disrupt the Democratic party and 
ensure Republican triumph. Stephens remonstrated with 
Buchanan, t and finding him resolute, washed his own hands 
of responsibility for further troubles by declining to serve 
longer in Congress. Stephens's true reason for retirement, 
in addition to his feeling of fatigue, was expressed by him in 

* J. W. DuBose, Life of William Lowndes Yancey, Birmingham, Ala., 
1882, pp. 361-364; W. G. Brown, The Lower in South American History, 
N. Y., 1902, p. 141. 

t Johnston and Browne, Life of Stephens, pp. 347, 348. 



174 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

a letter to Dr. Z. P. Landrum of Lexington, Ga., July i, 
i860: "It was in prospects of the events we have now upon 
us, * the shadows ' of which I saw in advance of their approach, 
with the full conviction and consciousness that / could do 
nothing to avert them, that caused me to retire from that 
position of responsibility I had held so long, and in which 
I felt satisfied I could no longer be useful." * In a speech 
to his constituents at Augusta at the time of his withdrawal, 
July 2, 1859, Stephens was less frank. He said in the midst 
of it: 

"All those great sectional questions which so furiously 
in their turn agitated the public mind, forboding disaster, 
and which from my connection with them caused me to 
remain so long at the post you assigned me, have been 
amicably and satisfactorily adjusted, without the sacrifice 
of any principle or the loss of any essential right. At this 
time there is not a ripple upon the surface. The country 
was never in a profounder quiet, or the people from one 
extent of it to the other in a more perfect enjoyment of the 
blessings of peace and prosperity secured by those institu- 
tions for which we should feel no less grateful than proud. 
It is at such a time, and with these views of its condition, 
that I cease all active connection with its affairs." f 

Stephens was, in fact, bewildered as well as disheartened 
by the distressful complications in party and sectional 
affairs, and was not yet ready to take the field against the 
programme of Buchanan and his associates.. 

Within a fortnight of the pacifist utterance of Stephens 
at Augusta a sharply conflicting view of conditions and 
prospects was expressed by Alfred Iverson, junior Senator 
from Georgia, in a speech at his home in the town of Griffin 
on July 14. Asserting that the faction-split Northern Democ- 
racy was "paralyzed and powerless," he declared that the 
coming year would witness the election of a Republican 
President, and that, considering such an event a declaration 

* Henry Cleveland, Stephens, p. 669. t Ibid., p. 639. 



THE ELECTION OF 1860 175 

of war against slavery, he would favor, upon its occurrence, 
the prompt establishment of a separate Southern con- 
federacy. Meanwhile he advocated the repudiation of all 
concessions by the South. He combined the Missouri Com- 
promise, the Wilmot Proviso, the legislation of 1850 and the 
Kansas act in one sweeping denunciation as a series of in- 
fringements upon Southern rights. He said he had once em- 
braced the squatter-sovereignty heresy, but now repudiated 
it and advocated a square defiance to the abolition party by 
an unconditional demand for the fullest protection to slave 
property in all regards within the field of controversy.* 
Iverson's speech was of course published broadcast by the 
same newspapers which had printed Stephens's "farewell 
speech" the week before. The conflict of these expressions 
furnished material for hot discussion by press and people 
throughout the summer. Iverson's analysis was of course 
the more true, but Stephens's reputation and personal follow- 
ing were far the greater; and the people with customary 
optimism generally accepted the prophecy of calm and 
rejected that of storm. 

The course of party developments within the state in 1859 
was such as to promote for the time being a Union-saving 
disposition. The executive committee of the Know-nothing 
party, supported by resolutions of massmeetings at LaGrange 
and elsewhere, issued an address in effect dissolving that 
party in Georgia, but denouncing maladministration by 
the Democrats in state and nation, and inviting all citizens 
who were opposed to the Democratic party to join in an 
"opposition convention" to meet on the third Wednesday 
in July. On account of confusion between Macon and Mil- 
ledgeville as the place of meeting, this convention was a 
failure. The delegates who met at Macon, however, adopted 
a platform endorsing the Federal Constitution and the Dred 
Scott judgment, denouncing the squatter-sovereignty doc- 

* Federal Union, July 26, 1859; I. W. Avery, History of Georgia, p. 104. 



176 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

trine as a delusion, condemning the futher agitation of the 
slavery question, and censuring the extravagance and corrup- 
tion of the Democratic administrations. The meeting then 
called a second "opposition convention" to meet in Atlanta 
on August lo, and adjourned. At this second convention 
the proceedings of the Macon meeting were ratified, and 
Warren Aiken was nominated for Governor.* Benjamin 
H. Hill was the leading figure in the movement, but he was 
not disposed to invite a second sure defeat by running again 
for the governorship at this time. He endorsed Aiken's 
candidacy in a public letter, in which he denounced squatter 
sovereignty on constitutional grounds and declared that 
the election of Douglas would be for all practical purposes 
equivalent to the election of a "Black Republican." f 
From the beginning of this movement its promoters expected 
it to form part of a "Constitutional Union" party in i860, 
appealing to men in all quarters of the country to quell 
the sectional wrangling. J 

The Democratic convention for the gubernatorial cam- 
paign met at Milledgeville on June 15, 1859, and filled its 
session with excited debate between those who wished to 
adopt resolutions: (i) endorsing the Cincinnati platform, 
(2) expressing confidence in the patriotism of Buchanan 
and approval of his inaugural address and annual message, 
and (3) nominating Joseph E. Brown for Governor; and 
those on the other hand who wanted merely to nominate 
Brown and adjourn. Toombs, who was not present, had 
expressed himself in favor of an endorsement of the adminis- 
tration in the usual resolutions of confidence. Chastain 
and Wright were the chief advocates of this policy in the 
convention, and Jones of Columbus the chief opponent. 

* Southern Recorder, July 26 and Aug. 16, 1859. 
t Ibid., Aug. 9, 1859. 

t Editorial from the Savannah Republican, reprinted in the Southern 
Recorder, May 10, 1859. 



THE ELECTION OF 1860 177 

When the vote was taken, the first and third resolutions 
were adopted unanimously and the second by 274 votes to 
34. Brown was then brought in to make a speech, the 
burden of which was that though he could not approve 
everything done by the national administration, he depre- 
cated discord in the party and hoped that the Democracy 
would be kept united.* 

Toombs endorsed this position on Brown's part in a widely 
circulated speech which he delivered at Augusta on Sep- 
tember 8, 1859. He said in regard to the Kansas bill and 
later developments: 

"When we condemned and abrogated congressional inter- 
vention against us, that was a great point gained. Congress 
had actually excluded us from the territories for thirty years. 
The people of a territory had in no instance attempted such 
an iniquity. I considered it wise, prudent and politic to 
settle the question against our common enemy. Congress, 
even if I left it unsettled as to our known friends, the people 
of the territories. We could not settle the question of the 
power of the people over slavery while in a territorial con- 
dition, because Democrats differed on that point. We 
therefore declared in the Kansas bill that we left the people 
of the territories perfectly free to form and regulate their 
domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the 
Constitution of the United States. We decided to refer 
the question to the Supreme Court. It has gone there 
and been decided in our favor. The Southern friends of 
the measure repudiate the principle of squatter sovereignty. 
I stand its steady and uncompromising adversary. The 
doctrine of Douglas has not a leg to stand upon. Yet I do 
not belong to those who denounce him. The organization 
of the Democratic party leaves this an open question, and 
Mr. Douglas is at full liberty to take either side he may 
choose, and if he maintains his ancient ground of neither 
making nor accepting new tests of political soundness I 
shall consider him a political friend and will accept him as 

* Stenographic report of the convention's proceedings, in the Southern 
Recorder, June 21, 1859. 



178 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

the representative of the party whenever it may tender him; 
and in the meantime if he should even wander after strange 
gods, I do not hesitate to tell you that with his errors I pre- 
fer him and would support him tomorrow against any oppo- 
sition man in America. We are told that we must put a new 
plank in the platform of the Democratic party, and demand 
the affirmance of the duty of Congress to protect slavery in 
a territory where such territory may fail to discharge this 
duty. I reply, I do not think it wise to do the thing proposed. 
. . . No; I shall prescribe no new test of party fealty to 
Northern Democrats, those men who have hitherto stood 
with honor and fidelity upon their engagements. They 
have maintained the truth to their own hurt. They have 
displayed a patriotism, a magnanimity rarely equaled in 
the world's history, and I shall endeavor in sunshine and in 
storm, with your approbation if I can get it, without it if 
I must, to stand by them with fidelity equal to their great 
deserts. If you will stand with me we shall conquer faction 
in North and South, and shall save the country from the 
curse of being ruled by the combination now calling itself 
the opposition. We shall leave this country to our children 
as we found it — united, strong, prosperous and happy." * 

Toombs was at this time, clearly, still cherishing tlie pacific 
hope of preserving the Union under a broad-policied Demo- 
cratic administration, and still considered himself bound to 
labor with all strength to that end. But at the middle 
of the following month the occurrence of John Brown's 
raid at Harper's Ferry, and in December the wrangles in 
the House in the speakership deadlock, together with the 
increasing obstruction of fugitive-slave rendition in the 
Northern states, destroyed most of his remaining optimism. 
He wrote Stephens on December 26: "I shall make a speech 
very early after the holidays reviewing calmly the state of 
the country, the evils, remedies, eflPects and consequences. 
I shall make a clean breast of it, 'nothing extenuate nor 
set down aught in malice'; but I shall not withhold the 

* Southern Recorder, Sept. 13 and Oct. 4, 1859; Stovall, Toombs, pp. 
165-168. 



THE ELECTION OF rseo 179 

truth because it may be unpalatable or even dangerous to 
anybody or any section." This speech was delivered in 
the Senate on January 24, i860, nominally upon the resolu- 
tion offered by Mr. Douglas directing the judiciary com- 
mittee to report a bill for the protection of each state and 
territory against invasion by the authorities and inhabitants 
of every other state and territory. It was an elaborate 
review of the situation and a superb statement of his own 
position. He said : 

"Mr. President and Senators: The legislation proposed by 
the resolution on your table opens a new page in the history 
of our country. Such legislation clearly falls within the 
constitutional powers of Congress, and is a step in the right 
direction. I accept it as an effort to enable the federal 
government to perform its duty on this subject by preserv- 
ing peace among these confederate states. But, sir, I fear 
that the disease lies too deep for the remedy. But it is 
suggestive, and furnishes a standpoint from which we may 
well survey the state of the republic — its past, its present 
and its future. 

"Hitherto this government has been enabled to grapple 
with and surmount all the difficulties, foreign or domestic, 
which have impeded its course or threatened its safety. . . . 
Some of them rose to the dignity of constitutional questions; 
but none of them involved the existence or permanent safety 
of society; and when submitted to the arbitrament of the 
ballot-box, all men submitted quietly to the result, because 
the fundamental principles of the social fabric were not 
affected by the result. Now all this has changed. The 
feeling of nationality, of loyalty to the State, the feeling 
of a common interest and a common destiny, upon which 
foundations alone society can securely and permanently 
rest, is gradually but rapidly passing away. Hostility to 
the compact of Union, to the tie which binds us together, 
animates the bosoms and finds utterance in the tongues of 
millions of our countrymen, and leads to the habitual dis- 
regard of its plainest duties and obligations. Large bodies 
of men now feel and know that party success involves public 
danger, that the result may bring us face to face with revolu- 



l8o THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

tion. Senators, we all feel it in this chamber; we hear it 
proclaimed here every day. . . . 

"The public danger can only be averted by the removal 
of its real causes. These causes are plain, palpable, apparent 
to the lowest comprehension. The fundamental principles of 
the system of our social Union are assailed, invaded and 
threatened with destruction; our ancient rights and liberties 
are in danger; the peace and tranquillity of our homes have 
been invaded by lawless violence, and their further invasion 
is imminent; the instinct of self-preservation arouses society 
to their defense. These are the causes which are under- 
mining, and which if not soon arrested will overthrow the 
Republic. . . . 

"We are virtually in civil war, and these are the causes 
of it. It is known and felt on this floor. I feel and know 
that a large body of these Senators are enemies of my 
country. I know they and their associates have used the 
power which has been placed in their hands by many of the 
states, to assail and destroy the institutions of these confed- 
erate states. I know that under color of the liberty of speech, 
even in these halls, day by day and year after year they have 
thundered their denunciations against slavery and slave- 
holders, against confederates and their institutions, and thus 
seek to apply the torch to our homesteads and to desolate 
our land with servile and internecine war. Sir, the present 
state of things is no longer compatible with our security nor 
our honor. We demand peace or war. We prefer peace; 
we have sought it through peaceful channels; but though 
the road to it shall lead through war, we intend to have it. . . . 

"These public enemies are Abolitionists, who have formed 
a coalition with all the waifs and strays — deserters of all 
former political parties — and the better to conceal their 
real purposes have assumed the name of the Republican 
party. This coalition has but one living, animating prin- 
ciple, and that is hatred of the people and institutions of 
the slaveholding states of this Union. This coalition has 
evinced by its acts, its declarations, a fixed and determined 
purpose, in spite of the Constitution, in spite of their own 
solemn engagements to obey and maintain it, and in spite of 
all the obligations which rest on every member of every 
civilized state, to limit, to restrain, and finally to subvert, 
the institutions of fifteen states of the Union. 



THE ELECTION OF 1860 i8l 

1 

"Sir, I know these are strong charges; I have not made 
them lightly. I speak in sorrow, not in anger. I make 
them with pain, not pleasure. I feel it a duty I owe to my 
country, to my whole country, to speak the truth plainly, 
that the people may know and perchance avert the public 
calamity. I feel deeply the obligation which rests upon me 
to sustain them by clear and irrefragable proofs before the 
Senate, the country and the civilized world; to that duty 
I now proceed. 

"I charge, first, that this organization has annulled and 
made of none effect a fundamental principle of the Con- 
stitution of the United States in many of the states of this 
Union, and have endeavored and are endeavoring to accom- 
plish the same result in all the non-slaveholding states. 

"Secondly. I charge them with openly attempting to 
deprive the people of the slaveholding states of their equal 
enjoyment of, and equal rights in, the common territories 
of the United States, as expounded by the Supreme Court, 
and of seeking to get control of the federal government with 
the intent to enable them to accomplish this result by the 
overthrow of the federal judiciary. 

"Thirdly. I charge that large numbers of persons belong- 
ing to this organization are daily committing offenses 
against the people and property of these confederate states, 
which, by the laws of nations, are good and sufficient causes 
of war even among independent states; and governors and 
legislatures of states, elected by them, have repeatedly 
committed similar acts. 

"Now, for these causes, I maintain that this coalition is 
unfit to rule over a free people; and its possession of the 
federal government is a just cause of war by the people 
whose safety is thereby put in jeopardy." 

He then quoted the Constitution and showed the con- 
stitutionality of the rendition acts of 1793 and 1850, sum- 
marized the statutes of nine Northern states nullifying 
these acts of Congress, censured the nullifying procedure of 
the Wisconsin superior court, sketched the territorial strife, 
and denounced abolitionist incendiarism, and particularly 
condemned John Sherman, then candidate of the Republi- 
cans for the speakership of the House, for endorsing, along 



l82 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

with sixty-seven other members of Congress, the publication 
of Helper's Impending Crisis. Repeating his charges of 
Republican responsibility for these things and for the John 
Brown raid, he continued: 

"It is in vain, in the face of these injuries, to talk of peace, 
fraternity, and a common country. There is no peace; 
there is no fraternity; there is no common country. I 
and you and all of us know it. My country is not common 
to the men who would counsel the overthrow of her system 
by social and servile war and all of its attendant horrors, 
and I trust never will be. ... I submit it to the judgment 
of the Senate, the country and the civilized world, if, accord- 
ing to the public law of all civilized nations, we have not 
just cause of war against our confederates .? I further submit, 
that our duty and our security require us to accept it speedily, 
unless we can get redress through the operation of the govern- 
ment, or of the states of whose citizens we complain. To 
them we make this final appeal. Give us the compact; give 
us peace. Disturb no longer our domestic tranquillity, 

"To make this appeal effectual it is our duty at the South, 
first, to crush out the party divisions which exist among 
ourselves; to unite with all men who feel the wrongs of their 
country and who are willing to unite for their redress; who 
have no affiliation or sympathy with Black Republicanism 
in any of its forms, and are ready to drive them from the 
national councils." 

In concluding the speech he addressed, as will be seen, a 
peroration to the people of Georgia: 

"Sir, I have Httle more to add: nothing for myself. I 
feel that I have no need to pledge my poor services to this 
great cause, to my country. My state has spoken for 
herself. Nine years ago a convention of her people met and 
declared that her connection with this government depended 
upon the faithful execution of this fugitive slave law and her 
full enjoyment of equal rights in the common territories. I 
have shown that the one contingency has already arrived; 
the other waits only the success of the Republican party 
in the approaching presidential election. I was a member 
of that convention, and stood then and now pledged to its 



THE ELECTION OF 1860 183 

action. I have faithfully labored to avert these calamities. 
I will yet labor until this last contingency happens, faith- 
fully, honestly, and to the best of my poor abilities. When 
that time comes, freemen of Georgia, redeem your pledge: 
I am ready to redeem mine. Your honor is involved, your 
faith is plighted. I know you feel a stain as a wound; your 
peace, your social system, your firesides are involved. 
Never permit this federal government to pass into the trai- 
torous hands of the Black Republican party. It has already 
declared war against you and your institutions. It every 
day commits acts of war against you; it has already com- 
pelled you to arm you for your defense. Listen to 'no vain 
babblings,' to no treacherous jargon about 'overt acts'; they 
have already been committed. Defend yourselves. The 
enemy is at your door; wait not to meet him at the hearth- 
stone — meet him at the doorsill and drive from the temple 
of liberty, or pull down its pillars and involve him in a com- 
mon ruin." * 

In this, which promptly became famous as the "doorsill 
speech" Toombs still pleaded for the security of Southern 
rights within the Union, and urged the union of all patriotic 
elements, great and small, to avert the disrupting culmina- 
tion of a Republican triumph. In a letter to Stephens on 
January 31 Toombs said that his speech had been effectual 
in defeating Sherman's candidacy for the speakership, and 
that Pennington of New Jersey, a more colorless man, would 
probably be elected. This prophecy was promptly realized. 
On February 10 Toombs wrote again to Stephens at greater 
length, alluding further to the election of Pennington which 
had then taken place, discussing the reception of his own 
doorsill speech and stating his position upon fresh issues then 
arising. He wrote in part: 

"The defeat of Sherman was gall and wormwood to the 
Seward division of the Blacks. It brought them into 
national discredit and strengthened the opposition to 
Seward inside his party. My points on them, especially 

* Congressional Globe Appendix, 36th. Cong., ist. sess., pp. 88-93. 



l84 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

in the fugitive slave case, have told even stronger than I 
supposed at the North, The party are dumfounded here. 
No man among them as yet has dared to come up to their 
defense, tho' next week I am told Hale, Foot and Fessenden 
will come back at me. If they are fools enough to keep up 
that fight we shall whip them even in several of the New 
England states. . . . 

"You have doubtless seen that Brown, Davis and Pugh 
have all introduced resolutions concerning slavery in the 
territories. Davis's are those approved by the Pres[iden]t 
and are in the main good; but I think all of them are wrong. 
It is the very foolishness of folly to raise and make prominent 
such issues now. By the Kansas act of 1854 we repealed 
the Missouri restriction, declared our purpose as far as pos- 
sible to remove the question of slavery from the halls of 
Congress, and therefore gave the territorial legislatures 
all the power over it which the Constitution allowed them 
to exercise, and to test that limit provided that all cases 
involving liberty might be appealed to the Supreme Court. 
The court has decided that Congress cannot prohibit slavery 
in the territories, and altho' I think it involves the power 
of the territorial legislatures also, yet it is true that that 
precise point has never come directly before the court and 
never may. It has not arisen in seventy years, it may not 
arise in seventy years more. Why then press it now, when 
we have just as much weight as we can possibly carry.? 
Hostility to Douglas is the sole motive of movers of this 
mischief. I wish Douglas defeated at Charleston, but I 
do not want him and his friends crippled or driven off. 
Where are we to get as many or as good men in the North 
to supply their places? . . . The Democratic caucus meets 
tomorrow to try to carry out this business. I shall resist 
it to the last extremity." 

During the next few weeks the debate was continued upon 
the sectional issue, during which Toombs took occasion 
to repeat a denial which he had already made of the absurd 
report that he had said that he expected to call the roll of 
his slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill monument.* Toombs 
found occasion on February 27 to give further elaboration 
* Congressional Globe, 36th Cong., 1st. sess., p. 838. 



THE ELECTION OF 1860 185 

to the argument of his "doorsill speech"; and on March 
7 he delivered a powerful impromptu in reply to an attack 
upon his position by Mr. Wade. After reasserting the 
position he had already taken, he said in part: 

" You say we have governed the country for seventy years. 
Admit it to be true, and what higher compliment can be paid 
the 'slave power' which you every day denounce. . . . We 
have maintained the true principles of the Constitution. 
We have reconciled liberty with order; maintained the 
public tranquillity by striving for equal justice to all men 
and all sections of our common country. You daily sing 
peans to our success in this mighty work of the well-govern- 
ment of a great country, and yet seek to wrest it from those 
who you admit have achieved these grand and unparalleled 
results. You seek to subvert their policy and substitute 
for it your own crude and reckless theories, which have 
produced nothing but discord in the past and promise 
nothing but ruin in the future. . . . 

*' If the South has governed this country, she has served 
it with unselfish devotion. . . . They have sought no exclu- 
sive privileges, no protection, no bounties at your hands. 
They have paid their taxes, fought the battles of their coun- 
try, and claim only at your hands the peaceful enjoyment 
of the fruits of their own honest toil. But this has not been 
the case with the people of the non-slaveholding states. 
From 1789 to this day, a continual, incessant cry has come 
up to the Capitol from them for protection, prohibition and 
bounties. . . . The Government has listened and granted 
their requests. . . . Nineteen-twentieths of the whole legis- 
lation of Congress is for and on account of the non-slave- 
holding states. We have asked none, sought none. My 
business here, and that of my colleagues from the South, 
has been chiefly to mitigate your exactions. Day after day 
are we reminded of the strong declaration of a distinguished 
representative from South Carolina, that he nor his con- 
stituents ever felt the federal government except by its 
exactions. Apart from the protection which the very fact 
of living in a powerful government gives us against foreign 
aggression, our portion of the benefits of the federal govern- 
ment are difficult to estimate. We have not generally com- 
plain'ed of this inequality; our pursuits were different; 



l86 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

we were content that the great Interests of the country were 
benefited, though to a large extent to our cost. As country- 
men, we listened kindly to your petitions to protect you 
against your foreign competitors. We had none. We 
were better satisfied because the thing was done under the 
name of paying taxes to government, and we had not been 
taught to consider ourselves as aliens in your part of a com- 
mon country. This has changed. The fault lies not at our 
door. ... 

"The Senator from Ohio is mistaken; his reproach that the 
South is always clamoring for legislation is unjust. . . . We 
ask you to deliver up our fugitives from labor when they 
escape from service. You refuse or defeat it. We ask 
that all the people of all the states shall freely enter all the 
common territories with their property, enjoy it in peace 
and quiet under the protection of a common government, 
until they shall be severally matured into states, and ad- 
mitted into the Union; and then we agree that, as sovereign 
states, they may make their domestic policy such as they 
please. If they do not want African slavery, let them say 
so, and abolish it. You pretend you will not interfere with 
our institutions in the states. We do not believe you. It 
is true the Constitution forbids it; but you have shown so 
utter a disregard of that instrument in reference to fugitive 
slaves that we cannot trust your loyalty. ... 

" What a huge imposition is this same Black Republican 
party! They proclaim every day their detestation and horror 
of slavery. . . . But if anyone even suggests the possibility 
of cutting them loose from this body of death, what a 
patriotic rage do they manifest! Oh, no! They will die 
first. They hug the putrid carcass to their bosoms, and 
threaten us with 'eighteen million' Black Republicans, 
carrying death and slaughter into the peaceful abodes of 
their deliverers. If they believed half they say, they ought 
to be for disunion. They should struggle continually to 
be relieved of this 'covenant with death, this league with 
hell.' They seem to have precisely enough of this 'sum 
of all villainies,' and they will perish ere they part with one 
sixteenth part of a hair of it. There is no harmony between 
their professions and their conduct; this argues hypocrisy, 
not sincerity. If you honestly want to relieve your souls 
from the guilt of complicity with slaveholding, say so with 



THE ELECTION OF I860 187 

manly firmness. We will give you a discharge whenever 
you want it." * 

Mr. Wade had been quoted a few weeks previously f 
as having said in the Senate in 1856: "There is really no 
Union now between the North and the South; and he 
believed that no two nations upon earth entertain feelings 
of more bitter rancor towards each other than these two 
nations of the Republic." But by i860 when the anti- 
slavery cause was about to reach the ascendant, he recanted 
his recognition of the probable emergence of two nations from 
the one. Following Toombs's reply to him above quoted 
he rejoined: 

"|I have only a word to say in reply. ... As for Ohio 
coming here and calling for any money out of the treasury, 
I think the Senator can hardly say that she has been very 
often here for that or any other purpose. Let her alone 
and she is well content. As to the talk of dissolving the 
Union, I have nothing to say. You may talk about the South 
going out, but I can see well enough that she will never go 
out. I see with perfect clearness that we must live together 
whether we will or not. We cannot get a divorce. If you 
go out, your states will be left occupying the same relations 
to us as now; and whether the Union existed or not, the 
same controversies would arise, and perhaps in a much more 
aggravated form than they do now. You may say: 'let 
us go off if you do not like our institutions,' but there is 
no letting go. You may not like us, but you cannot get rid 
of us. We are to live together eternally, and I think we 
had better try to live quietly. That is about all I want 
to say. I do not think the Senator made out much of a 
case, first or last." | 

This was of course not an argument but virtually a repeti- 
tion of Seward's assertion that all there was left for the 
South was to submit to such policy, just or oppressive, con- 

* Congressional Globe Appendix, 36th. Cong., ist. sess., pp. 156, 157. 

t Congressional Globe, 36th. Cong., ist. sess., p. 819. 

% Congressional Globe Appendix, 36th. Cong., ist. sess., p. 157. 



l88 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

stitutional or unconstitutional, as the government con- 
trolled by the Republicans might adopt. Toombs had 
already replied to this repeatedly in the strain of his assertion 
made in 1856 and quoted in the early pages of the present 
chapter: "I am content that they shall own us when they 
conquer us, but not before." 

Before Toombs spoke again on the sectional issue the 
Democratic party met in convention at Charleston and 
split asunder, in spite of his efforts in the preceding months 
to prevent it. Many Southern leaders were not content 
with a "doorsill" policy but wished to hasten the culmina- 
tion by a sally into open ground. Led by Yancey and 
Davis they courted an issue with the Douglas wing of the 
Democrats by demanding that the party incorporate the Dred 
Scott doctrine of "non-intervention" into its platform. 
Others were chiefly concerned with promoting the personal 
ambitions of rivals of Douglas for the Democratic nomination. 
Among these rivals were Buchanan, Breckinridge, Jefferson 
Davis, Hunter and Howell Cobb; and the course of Cobb's 
Georgia friends was typical. Near the end of November, 
1859, the Cobb supporters in the legislature summoned a 
state convention of the Democratic party to meet in Mil- 
ledgeville on December 8 to appoint delegates to the national 
convention. The notice was so short that few counties 
could take action, and upon the assembling of the convention 
the members of the legislature from such counties as had not 
sent delegates were allowed informally to represent their 
respective counties. This convention resolved, first, to 
send delegates to Charleston 'and to pledge themselves to 
support the nominee of the Charleston convention upon 
condition that that body should resolve to maintain the 
equality of the states and the rights of the South and the 
principles of the Dred Scott opinion. It resolved, second, 
to present the name of Howell Cobb to the Charleston con- 
vention as one worthy to fill the office of President of the 



THE ELECTION OF 1860 189 

United States, but to leave the Georgia delegation untram- 
meled in its vote for a candidate except as to the selection 
of one representing the principles indicated in the first 
resolution. It then appointed a quota of delegates for the 
state, endorsed Buchanan's administration, and adjourned. 
This December convention violated no precedents by virtue 
of its informality. But when its proposal of Cobb's name 
was published a chorus of protest arose, and the state execu- 
tive committee of the party summoned a new and more 
regularly constituted convention to meet at Milledgeville 
on March 14, i860. In the election of delegates there were 
heated contests in many counties between the friends and 
opponents of Cobb; and in the proceedings of the conven- 
tion the antagonism between Cobb and anti-Cobb factions 
was pronounced. The Cobb men elected A. R. Lawton of 
Savannah as presiding officer by 172 votes against 157 
for Solomon Cohen of Savannah; but in subsequent pro- 
ceedings the majorities were reversed. The wrangling then 
became so bitter that the anti-Cobb element withdrew 
temporarily and nominated a ticket of delegates of their 
own. The whole convention then reassembled and agreed 
to coonbine this ticket and the December ticket into a single 
delegation to Charleston of twice the usual number of mem- 
bers, instructed to vote as a unit. It then rejected the resolu- 
tions of the December convention and adjourned.* Stephens 
and Brown had exerted their influence privately against 
Cobb. Toombs appears to have held hands off. 

At Charleston soon after the convention assembled on 
April 23 the delegates from the Southern states held a 
caucus and resolved to demand the incorporation of the 
Dred Scott principle in the Democratic platform, in accord- 
ance with the resolutions which Davis had introduced in the 
Senate. Supported by the members from California and 
Oregon, the friends of this programme had a majority in 
* Southern Recorder, March 20, i860. 



I90 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

the committee on resolutions; but the minority of that 
committee presented to the convention as a separate report 
a platform in accordance with well-known views of Douglas, 
and after much wrangling the convention adopted the 
Douglas platform by a vote of 165 to 138. Led by William 
L. Yancey the delegates from all the cotton states bolted, 
and the remainder of the convention, failing to nominate 
a candidate under the two-thirds rule, adjourned to meet 
in Baltimore on June 18. The bolters meanwhile held a 
convention of their own, and after adopting a platform 
adjourned to convene again at Richmond in June. In May 
the Republican convention nominated Lincoln and Hamlin 
and declared not only that slavery did not exist in the 
territories but that Congress could not legalize it in them; 
and the Constitutional Union party nominated Bell and 
Everett, with the Federal Constitution and the enforcement 
of the laws as the sole plank in their platform. 

A committee of Democrats in Georgia promptly requested 
the leaders of the party in the state to discuss the Democratic 
split and advise their followers how to meet the dilemma. 
Their replies were published in the newspapers throughout 
the state.* Stephens in his letter expressed regret that the 
South had forced the issue at Charleston, abandoning its 
former endorsement of non-intervention and requiring new 
pledges from the Northern Democrats. He said he relied 
upon sober second thought to determine whether delegates 
should be sent to Baltimore and what course they should 
adopt. Herschel V. Johnson recommended that the South 
should recede from its new demands, which he said would 
secure no advantage while antagonizing many Northern 
Democrats. He advised that delegates be sent to Baltimore 
instructed to preserve the integrity of the party. Governor 
Brown wrote that in his opinion the demand of the South 

* E.g. in the Federal Union, May 22 and 29, i860; summarized in the 
writer's Georgia and State Rights, pp. 189, 190. 



THE ELECTION OF 1860 191 

while just was of doubtful expediency. He was in favor 
of sending delegates to Baltimore. Howell Cobb contented 
himself with writing a narrative of the recent developments, 
mentioning Douglas as a candidate known to be hostile to 
the Southern contention. "There is one point upon which 
I trust Georgia will stand firm," said he, "and that is, under 
no circumstances to support Douglas." Toombs's letter 
was the most vigorous of the series in its endorsement of 
what had been done and its advice against concessions. He 
wrote that in the developments at Charleston he saw posi- 
tive evidence of the advance of sound constitutional prin- 
ciples; that although it might not have been expedient to 
present so much truth on the slavery issue as was contained 
in the majority platform, it now ought to be firmly supported. 
While he approved the bolt of the Georgia delegates, he 
thought that in view of the overtures of the New York 
delegation the state should be represented at Baltimore. 
Such action would involve no sacrifice of principle, since 
a convention of the bolters could still be held at Richmond. 
Disavowing any fear at the prospect of the Union's disrup- 
tion, he wrote in conclusion: "Our greatest danger today is 
that the Union will survive the Constitution." 

Toombs was thus driven by the course of events to aban- 
don his policy of taking no part in the public discussion of 
the dispute within the Democratic party. Having declared 
himself in his letter to the Georgia committee, he could no 
longer hope that continued silence on his part in the Senate 
would facilitate the closing of the rift. It had been irksome 
to him to keep silent during the angry debates between 
Douglas and the two Mississippi Senators in the preceding 
weeks. He now resolved to state his views in full, hoping 
that they might prove sound and temperate enough and his 
arguments cogent enough to reunite the party, or failing 
this might strengthen the South to meet the issue. He 
accordingly delivered in the Senate on May 21 a prepared 



192 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

speech defending the Davis resolutions of March i, which 
asserted the right of citizens to emigrate to the territories 
with their slave property and denied the power either of 
Congress or a territorial legislature to interfere with that 
right. The speech, delivered as a reply to an attack by 
Douglas in the preceding week upon the Davis resolutions, 
was an elaborate denunciation of the squatter-sovereignty 
doctrine.* But to Toombs's chagrin little was accomplished 
by this speech beyond the placing of his views fully upon 
record. Realizing now that the Democratic rift was too 
wide to be closed by the efforts of himself or any of his 
colleagues, Toombs refrained from further discussion of the 
subject in the Senate during the closing weeks of the session, 
but devoted himself with even greater assiduity than usual 
to the prevention of favoritism and fraud in the appropria- 
tion bills. 

When the rump convention of the Democratic party finally 
nominated Douglas at Baltimore and the bolting Democrats 
nominated Breckinridge at Richmond, Toombs of course 
pronounced himself a supporter of "Breckinridge and 
Southern rights." Stephens, on the other hand, shrinking 
from the prospect of an imminent clash of the sections, 
endorsed the Douglas ticket. In the popular campaign 
in the fall Stephens labored in Georgia indefatigably, though 
with slight encouragement, in behalf of Douglas. Toombs 
took the stump in Georgia and the neighboring states; 
but realizing that his exertions could have little effect, since 
the real contest was of Lincoln against the field, he gave his 
most earnest thoughts to the problem which would be pre- 
cipitated in the probable event of Lincoln's victory. The 
popular vote cast in Georgia in November was for Breckin- 
ridge 51,893, for Bell 42,855, for Douglas 11,580. No 
Lincoln electors had been nominated in the state. In 
nearly all the preceding presidential elections the candidate 

* Congressional Globe appendix, 36th. Cong., ist. sess., pp. 338-345. 



THE ELECTION OF 1860 193 

carrying Georgia had carried the country; but now Lincoln 
received a total of 1,587,610 votes at the polls throughout 
the country; Douglas 1,291,574; Breckinridge 850,082; 
and Bell 646,124. The distribution of the vote was such 
that Lincoln with but a plurality at the polls secured a heavy 
majority in the electoral college. Virtually the whole North 
was carried by him, giving him 180 electoral votes. Most 
of the South was carried by Breckinridge, whose electoral 
vote was 72; Bell followed with 39, mainly from the Southern 
border states; and Douglas, though second at the polls, 
was last in the college with twelve. 

The candidate of the sectional party at the North was thus 
elected; but as has often occurred in American elections, 
the meaning was in a measure ambiguous. A large number 
of Southerners began at once to demand the immediate 
secession of the Southern states as a preventive of impend- 
ing oppression at the hands of the Republican administra- 
tion. Others, including Stephens, maintained that for the 
time being the defense of Southern rights did not require 
secession. Still others, with Toombs conspicuous among 
them, considered it necessary to sound the purpose of the 
North before determining irrevocably the policy of the 
South. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE STROKE FOR SOUTHERN INDEPENDENCE 

THE value of the Union had been actively calculated 
from time to time by sectional spokesmen and doc- 
trinal propagandists ever since the achievement of Ameri- 
can independence. Projects for its dissolution in remedy 
of real or fancied oppression had been active or latent in 
the thought of numerous public men in every decade. New 
England congressmen in 1793 and from 1803 to 18 14, and 
abolitionist agitators in the forties and fifties, were little less 
outspoken in disunion advocacy than were the Southern nul- 
lifiers in the early thirties and the "fire-eaters" in the late 
forties and the months preceding and following Lincoln's 
election.* Narrow-mindedness and devotion to parochial 
interests constantly hampered the maintenance of wisdom, 
justice and moderation in federal policy. The grievances 
of the South were real in each of its ante-bellum periods of 
protest, and the partial failure of each of its earlier campaigns 
for redress made the crisis of i860 all the more acute. 

South Carolina's bristling defiance in 1832 had carried 
but a temporary conviction to the majority interests that 
the Union if destined to be lasting and peaceable must dis- 
tribute its benefits and burdens with some degree of fairness. 

* The narrative of these sectional struggles is related with interpreta- 
tion favorable to the North in Schouler's, Von Hoist's, McMaster's and 
Rhodes's histories of the United States; and with interpretations favorable 
to the South in such less known books as W. C. Fowler, The Sectional Con- 
troversy, N. Y., 1863; S. D. Carpenter, The Logic 0} History, Madison, Wis., 
1864; G. Lunt, The Origin of the Late War, N. Y., 1866; A. Harris, The 
Political Conflict in America, N. Y., 1876. 



SOUTHERN INDEPENDENCE 195 

In the following decades the North not only grasped regu- 
larly the lion's share of appropriations, but by means of 
protective tariffs prevented European wares from competing 
with those of the North in Southern markets and drew 
foreign laborers instead into the United States to swell the 
prosperity and voting strength of the North. Various ele- 
ments in the Northern community in the same period either 
tolerated or encouraged the rise in their midst of agitations 
sure to produce intense irritation in the South. Mr. W. C. 
Fowler has told of a significant analysis of conditions by 
Judge Burnet of Cincinnati about 1850: "In repeated 
conversations he said to me in substance: 'These states 
cannot long hold together — they will separate.' On my 
replying, 'I can hardly believe the Southern states will be 
so unwise,' he answered *Ah, my dear sir, the difficulty is 
with Northern men. Great numbers of them do not value 
the Union so much as they do their doctrines upon slavery, 
which in their working are hostile to the Union. A spirit 
of disunion exists at the North which will increase in extent 
and intensity until it has produced a separation of the 
states.'" * Most of the Northern sectionalists however 
failed to realize and refused to concede the disunion tendency 
of their policies. Partly through wilful ignorance of South- 
ern conditions and purposes, they failed to see that the 
South had any actual or prospective grievances, and they 
considered every Southern measure of defense to be one 
of unprovoked aggression. They similarly refused to 
believe before secession was an accomplished fact that any- 
thing of earnest was contained in the Southern threats of 
disunion. 

Many Southern thinkers, on the other hand, had acquired 
the belief by 1850 that a firm defense, involving secession 
if need be, was necessary for Southern security; and by 
i860 great numbers of the people had come to endorse this 

* W. C. Fowler, The Sectional Controversy, N. Y., 1863, pp. Ill, VI. 



196 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

position. There was by this time in fact a very general 
agreement that Southern interests and Hberties were menaced 
with tremendous and irremediable injury, which ought to 
be prevented by the resistance of the whole community. 
Secession and the erection of an independent Southern 
nationality were widely contemplated with favor as a last 
and sovereign remedy. 

The principal disagreement at the South was as to the 
time and occasion proper for the final resort. Some advo- 
cated the awaiting of an overt act of oppression by the 
North-controlled federal government; others asked how 
defense was possible with any prospect of success after the 
machinery of the government should have fallen so com- 
pletely into the hands of the enemies of the South as to 
embolden them to an overt oppressive act. But virtually 
all the Southern leaders recognized that some tangible deed 
of hostility shared in by a great portion of the North would 
be necessary for rousing the mighty resolution of the Southern 
populace. Governor Brown, for example, who of all the 
public men in Georgia stood in closest touch with the great 
body of the yeomanry, considered himself instructed by the 
Georgia Platform, and stood ready in 1858 to summon a 
constituent convention and urge the people to elect seces- 
sionist delegates in case Congress should reject the applica- 
tion of Kansas for statehood under the pro-slavery Lecompton 
constitution. He wrote Stephens in that connection, 
February 9, 1858, "When the Union ceases to protect our 
equal rights it ceases to have any charms for me." 

The suspension of letter-writing between Toombs and 
Stephens while their policies were divergent during the 
summer, fall and winter of 1860-61 makes our knowledge of 
Toombs's intimate thoughts more fragmentary than usual. 
Yet there is little occasion for being at a loss regarding his 
views at any part of this critical period. The key to his 
position appears in the conclusion of his letter to Stephens, 



SOUTHERN INDEPENDENCE 197 

February lO, i860, already quoted: "I shall consider our 
ruin already accomplished when we submit to a party whose 
every principle, whose daily declarations and acts are an 
open proclamation of war against us, and the insidious 
effects of whose policy I see around me every day. . . . 
I am now endeavoring to avert this calamity by and thro' 
the aid of good men in the North." He was resolute against 
submission to oppressive policy at the hands of the Republi- 
cans; but he was not convinced by Lincoln's election that 
the Northern community was irretrievably controlled by the 
anti-slavery element. He thought that among the majority 
of the Republicans an ignorance of the spirit of apprehension 
and desperation prevailing at the South was partly responsi- 
ble for the tenure of anti-slavery policies, and he reasoned 
accordingly that if an absolutely convincing demonstration 
could be made that federal non-intervention with racial 
adjustments was a condition requisite to the continuance 
of the South in the Union, the bulk of the Republicans 
might be brought to repudiate disturbing policies and grant 
guarantees of Southern security. In order to make an 
utterly convincing demonstration, something different was 
necessary from the plans which had been followed in the 
previous crises. The ultimatum of 1850 contained in the 
Georgia Platform had, for example, proved ineffective, and 
the device of a convention of the Southern states as tried 
at Nashville in the same year had been found of still smaller 
avail. On the other hand the actual adoption of an ordi- 
nance of secession by a state acting by means of a convention 
would constitute an act, the dread of which it was hoped 
would prove more salutary than the performance. Toombs 
desired negotiations between Georgia and the federal govern- 
ment; but a state convention was not suitably constituted 
for negotiation. He accordingly disapproved the plans for 
a convention which became current in the state immediately 
after Lincoln's election, and advocated instead that the 



198 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

legislature make a popular referendum of the question 
whether the state of Georgia were willing to remain in the 
Union under a Republican president without an effective 
guarantee of Southern security. If the majority of the 
citizens should vote in the negative, the referendum would 
be understood to have instructed the governor and legisla- 
ture to present an ultimatum to Congress. In case of the 
rejection of this the legislature would consider itself em- 
powered and instructed to effect the secession of the state by 
the same process as ordinarily followed in the enactment of 
laws. Toombs thought that an ultimatum from a legisla- 
ture instructed by the people to secede in case of its rejection 
would constitute the most powerful pressure which could be 
brought upon the North. But his plan was too conciliatory 
for the ardent secessionists in Georgia and too threatening 
for adoption by the Unionists. 

The Georgia legislature met in i860 at the beginning of 
November and was in session at the time of the presidential 
election. As soon as the result was known, Governor 
Brown sent in a special message, November 7, giving the 
unwelcome news, reviewing the theme of Northern aggres- 
sions, asserting the critical nature of the issue now con- 
fronting the South, discussing the already mooted project 
of a convention of the Southern states, but advising against 
it on the ground of the inexpedience of delay in definite 
action. He recommended that retaliatory measures be 
taken toward Northern states that hindered the rendition 
of fugitive slaves, that a million dollars be appropriated as 
a military fund to be used in putting the state at once into 
a condition of defense, and that a state convention be 
promptly summoned for authoritative action on the question 
of withdrawal from the Union. 

The people as well as their leaders were profoundly stirred. 
In many counties mass meetings assembled and adopted 
memorials urging the legislature almost with one accord to 



SOUTHERN INDEPENDENCE 199 

carry out the recommendations of the Governor. The 
advice of leading citizens was in constant request, and the 
newspapers were filled with their responses. The legisla- 
ture itself invited a group of the most thoughtful public 
men to give their views in addresses on successive nights 
between the daily sessions of the assembly. Of the speeches 
thus delivered the most important were that of Thomas 
R. R. Cobb on the night of November 12, and those of 
Toombs and Stephens on the two nights following. 

T. R. R. Cobb, the younger brother of Howell Cobb, was 
a distinguished lawyer and publicist, but now appeared vir- 
tually for the first time as a political speaker. Fired by 
a conviction that patriotism required Southern independence, 
he repented his earlier unionism and delivered a ringing 
appeal for immediate and unconditional secession. Stephens 
wrote in after years * that the key-note of Cobb's speech 
was "We can make better terms out of the Union than in 
it," indicating that the strength of Cobb's argument lay 
in an assertion of the expediency of secession as a step leading 
to negotiations for the subsequent re-forming of the Union 
on a basis more favorable to the interests of the South. 
This statement by Stephens has been accepted by later 
writers, including the present one in a previous work. But 
a scrutiny of Cobb's report of this speech, prepared for 
publication within three days of its delivery,! reveals noth- 
ing of the nature asserted by Stephens. Cobb may possibly 
have used the re-formation argument at some other time 
in the secession campaign; but the tone of his speech before 
the legislature, in his own contemporary report of it, is 
distinctly in favor of a permanent separation from the North. 

* 1870, A. H. Stephens, War between the States, II, 321. 

t Substance of remarks made by Thomas R. R. Cobb, Esq., in the Hall of 
Representatives, Monday Evening, November 12, i860. The speech is re- 
printed in the Confederate Records of the State of Georgia, Atlanta, 1909, I, 
157-182. 



200 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

Toombs spoke on the night following. After sketching 
the conditions and motives which had led to the forming of 
the Union under the Constitution, and asserting with some 
elaboration that in the conduct of the government whereas 
the Southern statesmen had been consistently nation-wide 
in their patriotism the Northern representatives had con- 
sistently sought and secured sectional advantages through 
tariffs, subsidies and appropriations, he declared that since 
the Missouri issue in 1820 a growing element in the North 
had increasingly added insult to their injury of the South. 
The territorial restriction of slavery and the interference with 
the rendition of fugitive slaves by mob action and state 
legislation had been features of a campaign leading to the 
incendiarism of John Brown's raid. "Do you not love 
these brethren.?" he exclaimed, "Oh what a glorious Union, 
especially 'to secure domestic tranquillity!'" He continued: 

"The time has come to redress these wrongs, and avert 
even greater evils of which they are but the signs and sym- 
bols. , . . Hitherto they have carried on this warfare by 
state action, by individual action, by appropriation, by the 
incendiary's torch and the poisoned bowl. They were 
compelled to adopt this method because the federal execu- 
tive and the federal judiciary were against them. They 
will have possession of the federal executive with its vast 
power, patronage, prestige of legality, its army, its navy 
and its revenue, on the fourth of March next. Hitherto 
it has been on the side of the Constitution and right; after 
the fourth of March it will be in the hands of your enemy. 
Will you let him have it? [Cries of no, no, never.] Then 
strike while it is yet today. — Withdraw your sons from 
the army, the navy and every department of the federal 
public service. Keep your own taxes in your own coffers — 
buy arms with them and throw the bloody spear into this 
den of incendiaries and assassins, and let God defend the 
right. . . . Nothing but ruin will follow delay. The enemy 
on the fourth of March will entrench himself behind a quin- 
tuple wall of defense: — executive power, judiciary (Mr. 
Seward has already proclaimed its reformation), army, 



SOUTHERN INDEPENDENCE 201 

nav)2^ and treasury. Twenty years of labor and toil and 
taxes all expended upon preparation would not make up 
for the advantage your enemies would gain if the rising sun 
on the fifth of March should find you in the Union. Then 
strike, strike while it is yet time." 

After drawing an analogy between the condition of Amer- 
ica in 1776 and that of the South in i860, and denouncing 
anew the tyrannous purpose of the North, he concluded : 

"My countrymen, * if you have nature in you, bear it not.' 
Withdraw yourselves from such a confederacy; it is your 
right to do so; your duty to do so. I know not why the 
abolitionists should object to it, unless they want to torture 
you and plunder you. If they resist this great sovereign 
right, make another war of independence, for that will then 
be the question; fight its battles over again; reconquer 
liberty and independence." * 

On the next night Stephens addressed the legislature, 
devoting himself largely to a reply to Toombs's speech and 
to remarks which Toombs, who was sitting on the rostrum, 
interjected during the course of Stephens's argument. 
Stephens that night made his celebrated assertion that 
secession was inexpedient as a redress for existing wrongs 
but was a power within the scope of the state's rights, and 
if Georgia should secede she would continue to have his 
allegiance. As a part of his argument against secession he 
eulogized the American system of government and invited 
its comparison with any other. "England," interjected 
Toombs. "England, my friend says," continued Stephens. 
"Well, that is the next best I grant; but I think we have 
ivnproved upon England." He then turned with enthusiasm 
to the theme that the South had greatly prospered under the 

* Speech of Hon. Robert Toombs, delivered in Milledgeville on Tuesday 
evening, November ij, i860, before the Legislature of Georgia. Milledgeville, 
Ga., i860. The speech was also printed at Washington, D. C, i860, with 
the erroneous date of December 7 assigned to its delivery. Copies of both 
editions, which are very scarce, are in the Library of Congress. 



202 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

federal government. "In spite of it," said Toombs; and 
Stephens made an elaborate rejoinder. Stephens con- 
ceded, nevertheless, that the South had grievances demand- 
ing redress, but he advocated a Southern convention as the 
most proper means for securing it, and contended that a 
state convention was in any event requisite for the perform- 
ance of such a sovereign act as secession. "I am afraid of 
conventions," Toombs interjected. Stephens rephed, "I 
am not afraid of any convention legally chosen by the people. 
. . . But do not let the question which comes before the 
people be put to them in the language of my honorable 
friend who addressed you last night, 'Will you submit to 
abolition rule or resist?'" Toombs broke in: "I do not wish 
the people to be cheated." Stephens answered: "Now, 
my friends, how are we going to cheat the people by calling 
on them to elect delegates to a convention to decide all these 
questions, without any dictation or direction? ... I think 
the proposition has a considerable smack of unfairness, not 
to say cheat. He wishes us to have no convention, but for 
the legislature to submit this question to the people, 'sub- 
mission to abolition rule or resistance.' Now who in 
Georgia is going to vote to submit to abolition rule?" 
"The convention will," said Toombs. "No, my friend," 
replied Stephens, "Georgia will not do it. ... I advise the 
calling of a convention, with the earnest desire to preserve 
the peace and harmony of the state. I should dislike above 
all things to see violent measures adopted, or a disposition 
to take the sword in hand by individuals without the author- 
ity of law. My honorable friend said last night, 'I ask you 
to give the sword; for if you do not give it to me, as God 
lives, I will take it myself.'" "I will," shouted Toombs, 
and brought down the house with applause. "I have no 
doubt," rejoined Stephens, "that my honorable friend feels 
as he says. It is only his excessive ardor that makes him 
use such an expression; but this will pass off with the excite- 



SOUTHERN INDEPENDENCE 203 

ment of the hour. When the people in their majesty shall 
speak, I have no doubt he will bow to their will, whatever 
it may be, upon the 'sober second thought.'" * 

In the report of Toombs's speech before the legislature 
there appears no direct alFusion to his project of plebiscite 
instructions to the legislature. He had perhaps already 
sounded the members and found the bulk of them immova- 
bly convinced that the calling of a convention was the best 
procedure. The legislature in fact proceeded by unanimous 
vote to adopt an act, approved November 21, directing the 
Governor to order an election on January 2, 1861, of dele- 
gates to assemble in convention at Milledgeville on January 
16 with full power to redress the grievances of the state. 
In addition the legislature provided by unanimous vote for 
the issue of state bonds to the amount of a million dollars 
as a military fund, and it authorized the Governor to accept 
the services and provide equipment and training for not 
more than ten thousand troops of the three arms, and also 
to furnish arms to volunteer military companies in the state 
and to Encourage their organization, f 

Meanwhile, in fulfilment of Stephens's prophecy, Toombs 
was growing milder in his advocacy of drastic measures. On 
November 14, the day following his speech before the legis- 
lature, he telegraphed as follows to Mr. Keitt, a leading 
secessionist of South Carolina: "I will sustain South Caro- 
lina in secession. I have announced to the legislature that 
I will not serve under Lincoln. If you have power to act, act 
at once. We have bright prospects here." | But a month 
later, December 13, he sounded a different note when writ- 

* Johnston and Browne, Life of Stephens, pp. 367, 564-580; Cleveland, 
Stephens, pp. 694-713; Confederate Records of Georgia, I, 183-205. 

t Acts of the Georgia Assembly, i860; U. B. Phillips, Georgia and State 
Rights, pp. 196-198. 

X Edward McPherson, Political History of the United States during the 
Great Rebellion, p. 37. 



204 THE LIFE OF ROBERTTOOMBS 

ing from his home a widely discussed letter to a committee 
of citizens of the nearby village of Danburg in reply to their 
invitation for him to address them and give them guidance 
in the existing crisis. Asserting that the people of Georgia 
were unanimous upon the question of their wrongs and in 
their intention to redress them through the sovereignty of 
the state if necessary, he said diversity of opinion existed 
only upon the possibility of securing the redress of griev- 
ances within the Union and upon the time and circumstances 
most appropriate for an ultimate resort to secession. His 
chief concern was with the unification of sentiment; and 
to this end he recommended that a prompt and decisive test 
be put to the Republican party as to its intentions. He 
wrote : 

" Do this: offer in Congress such amendments of the Con- 
stitution as will give you full and ample security for your 
rights; then if the Black Republican party will vote for the 
amendments, or even a majority in good faith, they can be 
easily carried through Congress; then I think it would be 
reasonable and fair to postpone final action until the legis- 
latures of the Northern states could be conveniently called 
together for definite action on the amendments. If they in- 
tend to stop this war on your rights and your property, they 
will adopt such amendments at once in Congress; if they 
will not do this, you ought not to delay an hour after the 
fourth of March to secede from the Union." 

The unexpectedly moderate tone of this letter attracted 
eager attention. A. H. Stephens wrote to brother Linton, 
December 23, describing affairs at Augusta, Ga.: "The 
minute-men down there are in a rage at Toombs's letter. 
They say that he has backed down, that they intend to vote 
him a tin sword. They call him a traitor. ... I see that 
some of the secession papers have given him a severe railing. 
Mr. H. says his letter was the theme of constant talk on the 
cars, the fire-eaters generally discussing it, and saying that 
they never had any confidence in him or Cobb either." In 



SOUTHERN INDEPENDENCE 205 

a letter of the same day to R. M. Johnston, Stephens ex- 
pressed his own opinion however, that the Danburg letter 
was a master-stroke of secessionist policy, since it enabled 
Toombs to secure the confidence of conservative men who 
would shortly follow him into secession upon the easily 
foreseen rejection by the Republicans of the test which 
Toombs intended to present.* 

Congress had begun its session on December 4; but 
Toombs did not reach the capital and take his seat until 
December 19. In that interval the sectional issue was pro- 
ceeding apace toward a culmination. In the House on 
December 6 a committee of thirty-three was appointed to 
consider the perilous state of the country. By the end of 
the first week of this committee's existence the discussions 
and votes upon preliminary motions looking to Southern 
guarantees were such as to convince many Southern-rights 
men at Washington that no adequate concessions could be 
expected from the Republicans. Accordingly a meeting 
of Southern representatives was held on the night of Decem- 
ber 13 at which the following address was framed and signed 
by about half of the Senators and Representatives from the 
cotton-belt states: 

"To Our Constituents: The argument is exhausted. 
All hope of relief in the Union through the agencies of com- 
mittees, Congressional legislation, or constitutional amend- 
ments, is extinguished, and we trust the South will not be 
deceived by appearances or the pretense of new guarantees. 
The Republicans are resolute in the purpose to grant noth- 
ing that will or ought to satisfy the South. We are satisfied 
the honor, safety and independence of the Southern people 
are to be found only in a Southern Confederacy — a result 
to be obtained only by separate state secession — and that 
the sole and primary aim of each slaveholding state ought to 
be its speedy and absolute separation from an unnatural and 
hostile Union." 

* Johnston and Browne, Life of Stephens, p. 170. 



206 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

This address was spread through the South by telegrams 
to the newspapers with the names of the signers appended, 
including Senators Iverson, Benjamin, and Jefferson Davis. 
The name of Toombs was included in the list parenthetically 
with a statement of his absence from Washington and an 
assurance that he would have signed the address if he had 
been present.* But the publication of his Danburg letter 
simultaneously with the Southern Address give substantial 
grounds for doubting that he would have added his name 
to the list if he had been on hand. In fact it was not until 
much more definite tests had been rejected by the leaders of 
the Republican party that Toombs declared himself from 
Washington to be an unqualified and immediate secessionist. 

In the Senate before Toombs's arrival little was accom- 
plished beyond recriminations between Democratic and 
Republican members, until on December i8 a resolution 
offered by Mr. Powell was adopted which provided for a 
committee of thirteen to consider the sectional grievances 
and suggest a remedy. Two days later Vice-President 
Breckinridge named as the committee Powell of Kentucky, 
Hunter of Virginia, Crittenden of Kentucky, Seward of 
New York, Toombs of Georgia, Douglas of Illinois, Collamer 
of Vermont, Davis of Mississippi, Wade of Ohio, Bigler of 
Pennsylvania, Rice of Minnesota, Doolittle of Wisconsin, 
and Grimes of Iowa. Davis, who by signing the Southern 
Address of the previous week had already declared his 
belief that Southern grievances were beyond remedy within 
the Union, requested to be relieved from service on the 
committee of thirteen, but was persuaded by some of his 
Southern colleagues to withdraw that request. Toombs on 
the other hand accepted the appointment without reluctance. 
It gave him just the opportunity he desired for testing the 
purposes of the Republican party. Of the committee two 
were from the cotton states, three from the border states 
* McPherson, Rebellion, p. 37. 



SOUTHERN INDEPENDENCE 207 

of the South, three were Northern Democrats, and five were 
RepubHcans. All of them were among the most represen- 
tative and influential public men of their respective sections 
and parties. Any adjustment of the sectional issues which 
the several elements in this committee might agree upon 
would have a fair prospect of endorsement by the people; 
and if the committee should fail to agree upon constructive 
plans, the problems of the day might be taken as insoluble 
within the Union. 

On the day of the committee's first meeting, which was 
devoted to an informal preliminary discussion, the news of 
South Carolina's secession reached Washington and empha- 
sized the acuteness of the problem. On the next day, 
December 22, the committee set regularly to work, taking 
up first a series of resolutions which Crittenden had presented 
to the Senate. Toombs and Davis gave notice at the out- 
set that in order to prevent the committee from making a 
report which would have no prospect of adoption by Con- 
gress they would cast their votes against any resolution 
which the Republican members should oppose. To remove 
the necessity for this, however, the committee adopted a 
salutary rule that no proposition should be considered 
adopted unless it received the votes of a majority of each 
of the two groups in the committee: the five Republicans 
and the eight others. The official journal of the committee 
records that the adoption of this rule was the first business 
transacted on December 22. The journal may possibly be 
in error in recording the adoption of this rule prior to the 
vote on the first of Crittenden's resolutions. At any rate 
Toombs and Davis voted upon this resolution in accordance 
with the notice they had given, whereas in the case of all 
subsequent resolutions which they favored and the Repub- 
licans opposed these two spokesmen of the Lower South 
voted aye and let the resolutions be defeated under the rule 
by the Republican opposition alone. It is reported that at 



208 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

one time while the Crittenden resolutions as a whole were 
under discussion in the committee, "Mr. Crittenden said: 
'Mr. Toombs, will this compromise, as a remedy for all 
wrongs and apprehensions, be acceptable to you.^" Mr. 
Toombs with great warmth replied, 'Not by a good deal; 
but my state will accept it, and I will follow my state.'" * 
Whether this colloquy actually occurred or not, Toombs's 
attitude was just what was indicated by the report. 

The more important of the resolutions in Crittenden's 
series aimed to secure the slaveholding interest within the 
Union by guaranteeing through constitutional amendments 
the legal prevalence of slavery in the territories south of 
36° 30' and in the District of Columbia, by similarly guar- 
anteeing the interstate slave-trade and by promoting the 
rendition of fugitive slaves and providing indemnity for 
the owners of such as should be rescued from their captors. 
In rapid succession all these were defeated by the Repub- 
lican members, and nothing remained of Crittenden's series 
except two unimportant resolutions concerning the fees of 
commissioners in fugitive-slave cases and concerning the 
suppression of the African slave-trade. Both of these 
resolutions were intended as concessions by the South, and 
both were adopted by unanimous votes. As the next item 
of business Mr. Doolittle moved that the laws should secure 
to an alleged fugitive slave claiming not to be a fugitive, a 
jury trial before he should be delivered to the claimant. 
Mr. Toombs moved to amend by inserting the words, "in 
the state from which he fled." This amendment was 
adopted by a vote of 7 to 5; but the motion as amended was 
then lost by a vote of 3 yeas to 9 nays. This ended the 
day's work of the committee. The Republican members 
had rejected all the tests which the leading advocate of 
compromise had framed for them. The prospect for con- 
ciliation was blasted. 

* S. S. Cox, Three Decades of Federal Legislation, Providence, 1888, p. JJ.- 



SOUTHERN INDEPENDENCE 209 

Toombs that night sent the following powerful telegram 
which was published in the Savannah News on Monday, 
December 24, and immediately afterward circulated through- 
out the state: 

"Fellow-Citizens of Georgia: I came here to secure 
your constitutional rights or to demonstrate to you that you 
can get no guarantees for these rights from your Northern 
confederates. 

"The whole subject was referred to a committee of thirteen 
in the Senate yesterday. I was appointed on the committee 
and accepted the trust. I submitted propositions, which 
so far from receiving decided support from a single member 
of the Republican party on the committee, were all treated 
with either derision or contempt. The vote was then taken 
in committee on the amendments to the Constitution pro- 
posed by Hon. J. J. Crittenden of Kentucky, and each and 
all of them were voted against, unanimously, by the Black 
Republican members of the committee. 

"In addition to these facts, a majority of the Black Repub- 
lican members of the committee declared distinctly that 
they had no guarantees to offer, which was silently acquiesced 
in by the other members. 

"The Black Republican members of this committee of 
thirteen are representative men of their party and section, 
and to the extent of my information, truly represent the 
committee of thirty-three in the House, which on Tuesday 
adjourned for a week without coming to any vote, after 
solemnly pledging themselves to vote on all propositions 
then before them on that date. 

"The committee is controlled by Black Republicans, your 
enemies, who only seek to amuse you with delusive hope 
until your election, in order that you may defeat the friends 
of secession. If you are deceived by them, it shall not be 
my fault. I have put the test fairly and frankly. It is 
decisive against you; and now I tell you upon the faith of 
a true man that all further looking to the North for security 
for your constitutional rights in the Union ought to be 
instantly abandoned. It is fraught with nothing but ruin 
to yourselves and your posterity. 

" Secession by the fourth of March next should be thundered 



2IO THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

from the ballot-box by the unanimous vote of Georgia on 
the second day of January next. Such a voice will be your 
best guarantee for liberty, security, tranquillity, and glory." 

Toombs nevertheless continued to participate in the work 
of the committee of thirteen. In its session of December 
24 after some resolutions by Seward proffering slight con- 
cessions had been disposed of, Toombs in return proposed a 
series of resolutions. He had been willing to accept the 
provisions of the Crittenden resolutions as a minimum con- 
cession acceptable to the South. Now that they had been 
rejected he thought it proper to deal no longer with the 
minimum acceptable, but to present proposals of what he 
considered necessary for the full security of Southern interests 
and the lasting pacification of the Southern people. He 
believed that the Republicans were so little to be bound by 
pledges that nothing short of constitutional guarantees 
could safeguard the South. He therefore proposed resolu- 
tions looking to seven constitutional amendments: i. that 
every territory be open to slaveholders until the time of 
statehood, whereupon the question of slavery in the state 
should be determined by the people; 2. that slave property 
be declared entitled to the same protection as all other prop- 
erty at the hands of the United States government; 3. that 
persons committing crimes against slave property in one 
state and fleeing to another be delivered up as other criminals; 
4. that Congress pass laws for punishing persons in any state 
engaged in promoting invasion or insurrection in any other 
state; 5. that fugitive slaves should not have the benefit 
of the writ of habeas corpus or jury trial; 6. that Congress 
be prohibited from passing any law relating to slavery with- 
out the consent of a majority of the Senators and Represen- 
tatives of the slaveholding states; 7. that none of these 
provisions or others in the Constitution relating to slavery 
should be subject to alteration without the consent of all 
the states in which slavery should exist. These resolutions 



SOUTHERN INDEPENDENCE 211 

were uniformly defeated under the rule of the committee 
by the adverse votes of the RepubHcan members. The 
committee held two more sessions, but found it impossible 
to adopt any important resolutions. Accordingly on Decem- 
ber 28 on motion by Toombs it agreed to report to the 
Senate, with its journal, the fact that the committee had not 
been able to agree upon any general plan of adjustment. It 
then adjourned. 

Toombs's telegraphic address of December 22 was of course 
all the more influential because of its contrast with the still 
fresh Danburg letter. It appears to have moved public 
opinion in Georgia much more powerfully than the address 
of the Southern Congressmen had done. A group of citizens 
in Atlanta, for example, sent a telegram to Senators Douglas 
and Crittenden at Washington : 

"Mr. Toombs's despatch of the 22d. inst. unsettled con- 
servatives here. Is there any hope for Southern rights in 
the Union.? We are for the Union of our fathers if Southern 
rights can be preserved in it. If not, we are for secession. 
Can we yet hope the Union will be preserved on this prin- 
ciple? You are looked to in this emergency. Give us your 
views by despatch and oblige." 

Douglas and Crittenden delayed answering until the 
committee of thirteen finished its work. They then tele- 
graphed on December 29: 

"In reply to your inquiry, we have hopes that the rights 
of the South, and of every state and section, may be pro- 
tected within the Union. Don't give up the ship. Don't 
despair of the Republic." * 

Meanwhile the people of Georgia were continuing to 
voice their sentiments in resolutions by county massmeetings. 
It was as if half a hundred choruses had joined in the antiph- 
onal rendering of a mighty prelude to a battle-piece. The 

* McPherson, Rebellion, p. 38. 



212 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

major chord was Southern rights, of which the strongest 
notes were white supremacy, Republican fanaticism, the 
legitimacy of state secession and the expediency of Southern 
independence. From the central county of Spalding came 
in a preamble: "This government is and ought to be the 
government of the white people." An echo with modula- 
tions was returned by White county, hidden among the 
mountains of the northern border and remote from negro 
population: "Resolved . . . That we look with abhor- 
rence upon these acts [of the Republican party], and that we 
trace them to the fatal delusion which in seeking to equal- 
ize the negro and white races runs contrary to the will of 
Providence, as is evidenced in the intellectual inferiority of 
the black race and in the common experience and history 
of mankind." The plantation county of Troup on the pros- 
perous western border echoed this in turn, with another 
added note: "We are not warranted by experience or his- 
tory in temporizing with this party, expecting its fanat- 
icism to abate. Therefore we recognize secession as the 
only adequate remedy for existing evils." And resolutions 
from Dougherty county, in a fertile southwesterly district, 
declared: 

"We, a portion of the citizens and planters of Dougherty 
county do. Resolve, . . . That prudence, reason and wis- 
dom dictate to us that the most speedy and certain redress 
for all past and present political grievances, and the most 
sure guarantee against further aggressions of a similar 
character, is immediate and independent secession. [And 
we further] Resolve, That while we believe that each state 
should act for herself in this matter, we would hail with 
delight the withdrawal from the Union of other Southern 
states, and we would be glad to have Georgia unite one or 
more of them in forming a Southern confederacy." 

Gordon county in the northwest asserted, what appar- 
ently none of her citizens denied, that Georgia "came into 
the Union with the other states, as a sovereignty, and by 



SOUTHERN INDEPENDENCE 213 

virtue of that sovereignty has the right to secede when- 
ever in her sovereign capacity she shall judge such a step 
necessary." And the meeting in Richmond county on the 
eastern border, assuming its legitimacy to be well enough 
established, contented itself with resolving "that the only 
redress is immediate secession." On the other hand the 
memorial from Upson county, near the middle of the state, 
was the most vehement of the few which disapproved 
immediate and separate secession. It reads in part: 

"We deprecate every movement that looks to separate state 
action on the part of the Southern states as fraught with 
incalculable mischief and the wildest confusion, and ending at 
last in humiliation, bankruptcy and bloodshed. In coop- 
eration alone is safety and wisdom. Embarked in the same 
cause and identified with the same institutions, with a com- 
mon foe in front and a common danger behind, it would be 
monstrous if a single Southern state should without consul- 
tation and by separate action, attempt to decide the great 
question that now presses upon the South, not only for her- 
self but for her remaining fourteen sister states also. . . . 
The time has come for the final settlement of the slavery 
question upon an enduring and unequivocal basis, and to 
a general conference of the Southern states we would entrust 
the duty of declaring what that basis shall be." 

An elaborate memorial from Greene county made an 
unusual proposal for dual conventions, one of the Southern 
states to frame demands and one of the Northern states to 
decide whether these demands should be conceded. But 
even should secession eventuate, this memorial contended, 
"There should be the appearance and the reality of delib- 
eration and dignity in giving the death-blow to so great a 
republic"; and the resolution concluded: "Resolved. That 
in view of the great and solemn crisis which is upon us, we 
request our fellow citizens to unite with us in prayer to Al- 
mighty God that He would deliver us from discord and dis- 
union, and above all from civil war and bloodshed; and that 



214 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

He would so guide our counsels and actions that we may be 
able to maintain our rights without revolution." 

All the memorials which alluded to the project of arm- 
ing the state endorsed it; and finally the general tone of all 
the memorials save a few which expressed the same thing 
in a more excited manner, accorded with a resolution from 
Butts county: "We here today calmly and dispassion- 
ately pledge our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor to 
the defense and maintenance of the equality and sovereignty 
of Georgia, whether in or out of the Union." * 

Unconditional unionism was so unpopular in the state 
that its few adherents did little campaigning for unionism 
as such, but joined the ranks of the cooperationists for the 
time being, with a view to postponing secession and with 
the hope that delay and negotiation might bring a popular 
realization of the perplexities and dangers of secession and 
cause a reaction in favor of the Union. But Stephens, the 
leading opponent of immediate secession, thought there was 
little prospect of preventing the election of a majority of 
. secessionist delegates. The result at the polls on January 2 
justified his fears. Many of the delegates chosen, however, 
were not definitely pledged to a programme; and it was 
within the range of possibility that by debate in the conven- 
tion a majority might be won for cooperation and delay. 
Toombs was of course elected as a delegate from Wilkes, 
Stephens from Taliaferro, T. R. R. Cobb from Clarke, and 
nearly all the other most distinguished and trusted public 
men in the state from their respective counties. Whatever 
might be the action of the convention it would be the deci- 
sion of the most capable body of delegates which Georgia 
could produce. 

Meanwhile events were proceeding rapidly. South Caro- 
lina, having seceded on December 20, promptly sent com- 

* The whole collection of these memorials is published in the Confed- 
erate Records of the State of Georgia, I, 58-156. 



SOUTHERN INDEPENDENCE 215 

missioners to Washington to negotiate for the division of 
pubUc property and the national debt between South Car- 
oHna and the remaining states and for the evacuation of the 
forts in Charleston harbor. South Carolina in the capacity 
of an independent republic maintained, of course, that con- 
tinuance in keeping federal garrisons within the boundaries 
of the new republic against its protests would be an act of 
war. President Buchanan, while procrastinating as much 
as possible, denied the validity of secession; and Major 
Anderson commanding the little garrison in Charleston har- 
bor transferred his force, December 26, from the defense- 
less Fort Moultrie to the somewhat more formidable Fort 
Sumter. The South Carolina commissioners demanded the 
restoration of the former status pending further negotia- 
tions, but Buchanan refused to comply. This was taken by 
the secessionists at large as the giving of notice that ordi- 
nances of secession would not be respected by the federal 
authorities and that the possession of forts in the seceding 
states must be determined by force. In Georgia, Fort 
Pulaski, commanding the mouth of the Savannah river, 
was occupied merely by a caretaker. But at the end of 
December, when the places of the resigning Southern mem- 
bers of the cabinet were being filled by the appointment of 
coercionists, the Georgians at Washington considered the 
garrisoning of Pulaski to be imminent. Accordingly on 
January i, Toombs sent the following telegram to the True 
Democrat of Augusta, Ga.: 

"The cabinet is broken up, Mr. Floyd, Secretary of War, 
and Mr. Thompson, Secretary of the Interior, having 
resigned. Mr. Holt of Kentucky, our bitter foe, has been 
made Secretary of War. Fort Pulaski is in danger. The 
Abolitionists are defiant." 

In Savannah the same issue of the Republican which pub- 
lished this despatch contained the following editorial: 



2l6 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

"We have been absent from our post, . . . enjoying a short 
respite from our arduous labors, and on our return yester- 
day we found the entire city in commotion and laboring 
under the intensest excitement. Crowds were collected at 
every corner, and pressing around the bulletin boards with 
eagerness to read the latest news. This excitement was 
created by the despatches from Washington which will be 
found in our columns, and especially that from Senator 
Toombs who stands as a sentinel upon the tower for this 
state at least, and pledges his character and fame for the 
truth of his statements and the soundness of his opinions." 

For the preceding week the problem of Fort Pulaski had 
been in active discussion throughout the state; and in 
Savannah a project was set on foot for citizens to follow the 
plan of the famous Boston Tea Party and seize the fort 
without official authorization. Rumors of this carried Gov- 
ernor Brown to Savannah, where upon reading Toombs's 
telegram of January i, he issued orders, January 2, to Col. 
A. R. Lawton in local command of the militia, directing him 
to take possession of the fort and hold it in the name of the 
state.* The seizure, made accordingly next morning, ap- 
pears to have been applauded throughout the state. Out- 
side of Georgia the general stress of the times was too great 
and stirring occurrences too frequent for this episode to 
receive any special attention. 

At Washington the two Houses continued the discussion 
of the national crisis in the intervals of routine business. In 
the Senate Crittenden was pleading anew for his plan of 
conciliation through constitutional amendments; but others 
who spoke upon the issue did little but indulge in expressions 
of defiance. Toombs upon learning of his election as a dele- 
gate to the Georgia convention saw but ten days more of 
senatorial service ahead before his necessary departure for 
Milledgeville. He determined to make a last formal pres- 
entation of his views in such a way that it might possibly 
* Avery, History of Georgia, p. 146. 



SOUTHERN INDEPENDENCE 217 

stimulate a quick adjustment, or else would serve as his 
farewell address. He gave notice on January 3 of his desire 
to speak, and at his request was assigned the floor for Janu- 
ary 7. What he then delivered proved to be his farewell 
utterance, and it ranks easily as the most powerful of the 
series of addresses delivered by the departing Southern 
Senators. The most salient feature of the speech was the 
formulation which it contained of the demands of the 
Southern-rights champions, in whose behalf he accepted 
for oratorical effect the designation of rebels: 

"What do these rebels demand? First, 'that the people 
of the United States shall have an equal right to emigrate 
and settle in the present or any future acquired territory, 
with whatever property they may possess (including slaves), 
and to be securely protected in its peaceable enjoyment until 
such territory may be admitted as a state into the Union, 
with or without slavery as she may determine, on an equal- 
ity with all existing states.' . . . 

"The second proposition is: 'that property in slaves shall 
be entitled to the same protection from the government of 
the United States, in all of its departments, everywhere, 
which the Constitution confers the power upon it to extend 
to any other property, provided nothing herein contained 
shall be construed to limit or restrain the right now be- 
longing to every state to prohibit, abolish, or establish and 
protect slavery within its limits.' . . . 

"We demand in the next place, 'that persons committing 
crimes against slave property in one state and fleeing to 
another shall be delivered up in the same manner as persons 
committing crimes against other property, and that the laws 
of the state from which such persons flee shall be the test 
of criminality.' . . . 

" The next stipulation is that fugitive slaves shall be sur- 
rendered under the provisions of the fugitive slave act of 
1850, without being entitled either to a writ of habeas corpus 
or trial by jury, or other similar obstructions of legislation, 
in the state to which he may flee. . . . 

"The next demand made on behalf of the South is, 'that 
Congress shall pass efficient laws for the punishment of all 



2l8 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

persons in any of the states who shall in any manner aid and 
abet invasion or insurrection in any other state, or commit 
any other act against the laws of nations tending to disturb 
the tranquillity of the people or government of any other 
state.' ... 

"We demand these five propositions. Are they not right? 
Are they not just? Take them in detail, and show that they 
are not warranted by the Constitution, by the safety of our 
people, by the principles of eternal justice. We will pause 
and consider them; but, mark me, we will not let you decide 
the question for us. . . ." 

After a fresh arraignment of the Republicans in general 
and Lincoln in particular upon charges of incendiarism, 
tyranny, and revolutionary purpose, Toombs concluded 
as follows: 

"You will not regard confederate obligations; you will not 
regard constitutional obligations; you will not regard your 
oaths. What, then, am I to do? Am I a freeman? Is my 
state, a free state, to lie down and submit because political 
fossils raise the cry of the glorious Union? Too long already 
have we listened to this delusive song. We are freemen. 
We have rights; I have stated them. We have wrongs; I 
have recounted them. I have demonstrated that the party 
now coming into power has declared us outlaws and is de- 
termined to exclude four thousand million of our property 
from the common territories; that it has declared us under 
the ban of the empire and out of the protection of the laws 
of the United States everywhere. They have refused to pro- 
tect us from invasion and insurrection by the federal power, 
and the Constitution denies to us in the Union the right either 
to raise fleets or armies for our own defense. All these 
charges I have proven by the record; and I put them before 
the civilized world, and demand the judgment of today, of 
tomorrow, of distant ages, and of Heaven itself, upon the 
justice of these causes. I am content, whatever it be, to 
peril all in so noble, so holy a cause. We have appealed, 
time and time again, for these constitutional rights. You 
have refused them. We appeal again. Restore us these 
rights as we had them, as your court adjudges them to be, 
just as all our people have said they are; redress these fla- 



SOUTHERN INDEPENDENCE 219 

grant wrongs, seen of all men, and it will restore fraternity, 
and peace, and unity, to all of us. Refuse them, and what 
then? We shall then ask you, 'Let us depart in peace.' 
Refuse that, and you present us war. We accept it, and 
inscribing upon our banners the glorious words 'liberty and 
equality,' we will trust to the blood of the brave and the 
God of battles for security and tranquillity." * 

The Republican Senators, to whom this speech was 
directed, received it merely as a defiance and took no steps 
to prevent it from being a farewell address. Toombs con- 
tinued to occupy his seat in the Senate until the end of the 
week, January 12, witnessing impatiently the tiresome con- 
tinuance of the sectional wrangling. He then set out for 
Georgia to aid in the effort to create a new and happier 
nation. 

The Georgia convention assembled at Milledgeville, 
January 16, with every delegate present but one who was 
mortally ill. The states of Mississippi, Florida and Ala- 
bama had seceded on January 9, 10 and 11 respectively, 
and commissioners from South Carolina and Alabama were 
on hand at Milledgeville to persuade the Georgia convention 
to join in the project for a Southern Confederacy. The 
keystone position of Georgia, together with the well-known 
vigor, sobriety and tenacity of her people made her concur- 
rence a vital necessity. Her deliberations in fact appear 
to have been watched with more anxiety than those of any 
other state in the cotton belt. 

The convention was quickly organized with George W. 
Crawford as president; and on the third day of the session, 
January 18, Mr. Nisbet, a leading citizen of Macon and dele- 
gate from Bibb county, offered resolutions committing the 
convention to the policy of secession and providing for a 
committee to draft the ordinance. Ex-Governor Herschel 
V. Johnson offered as a substitute a long series of resolutions 

* Congressional Globe, 36th. Cong., 2d. sess., pp. 267-271. 



220 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS * 

calling for a Southern convention, framing demands similar 
to those which Toombs had made in his farewell speech, 
and declaring that Georgia would secede unless the securi- 
ties demanded should be quickly established by amend- 
ments to the United States Constitution. After an active 
discussion by Nisbet, Johnson, T. R. R. Cobb, Stephens, 
Toombs, Means, Reese, Hill and Bartow, the convention 
adopted Nisbet's main resolution by a vote of i66 to 130, 
and ordered the appointment of a committee of seventeen 
to prepare an ordinance. Nisbet was made chairman of 
this committee, and Toombs its second member. On the 
same day a resolution offered by Toombs was unanimously 
adopted approving the capture of Fort Pulaski and direct- 
ing Governor Brown to continue to hold it. Next day, 
when the committee of seventeen reported an ordinance 
withdrawing Georgia from the Union, Benjamin H. Hill 
moved the adoption of the Johnson resolutions as a substi- 
tute. This was defeated by 133 yeas to 164 nays, and the 
ordinance was then put upon its passage. Forty-four dele- 
gates who had previously supported the policy championed 
by Johnson, Hill and Stephens now joined the immediate 
secessionists, and the ordinance was adopted by 208 to 89, 
whereupon the president of the convention announced that 
it was his privilege and pleasure to declare that the state of 
Georgia was free, sovereign and independent. The news 
spread rapidly and met with wild acclamations throughout 
the state. All manifestations of unionism promptly dis- 
appeared, and public attention became concentrated upon 
the task of ensuring the success of Southern independence. 
The convention now assumed the duty of providing for 
the temporary performance of such functions as had for- 
merly been entrusted to the government of the United 
States, and of establishing connections outside of the new 
republic of Georgia. Toombs was appointed chairman of 
the standing committee on foreign relations, January -21. 



SOUTHERN INDEPENDENCE 221 

Two days afterward he reported from his committee a res- 
olution, promptly adopted, that the convention elect next 
day two delegates from the state at large and one from 
each of the eight congressional districts to represent Georgia 
in the convention of the seceded states scheduled to meet 
at Montgomery, February 4. When accordingly the first 
ballot was taken Toombs was found to be elected unani- 
mously as delegate from the state at large. Howell Cobb 
was elected on the third ballot as his colleague at large, 
and the following were elected as delegates from their sev- 
eral districts: Francis S. Bartow, Martin J. Crawford, 
Eugenius A. Nisbet, Benjamin H. Hill, Augustus R. Wright, 
Thomas R. R. Cobb, Augustus H. Kenan and Alexander H. 
Stephens. The election of Stephens, Kenan and Hill illus- 
trates the tendency quite general in the seceding states to 
choose a portion of their delegates from among the recent 
opponents of immediate secession, in order to give an air of 
moderation and responsibility to the movement. Further- 
more, Toombs had particularly recommended the election 
of Stephens. Some who had been vehement advocates of 
secession and had hoped to be sent to the Montgomery 
convention were mightily chagrined at these elections, and 
they complained that the Milledgeville convention had 
usurped authority in choosing Georgia's delegation. The 
action of the convention, however, though perhaps irregu- 
lar, was in accordance with the precedents of the American 
Revolution; and the people of Georgia appear to have been 
quite content with the men chosen to represent the state 
and with the process followed in selecting them. 

The principal further work done by Toombs as a member 
of the Georgia convention was the drafting of an address to 
accompany and justify the ordinance of secession. This 
was presented by Nisbet from the committee of seventeen, 
January 29, with the statement that Toombs was the author. 
It v> as a well-reasoned state paper, traversing ground which 



222 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

he had already covered in his Senate speeches. Its tone was 
relatively moderate, and its arguments convincing to those 
who were at all disposed to be convinced. The address was 
promptly adopted and ten thousand copies were ordered 
printed for distribution. On the same day the conven- 
tion, having completed such part of its task as needed to 
be performed before the organization of the Southern Con- 
federacy, adjourned subject to the call of its president for a 
later session at Savannah. 

The Montgomery convention assembled February 4, with 
delegates present from six seceded states, including Louisi- 
ana whose convention had adopted its ordinance January 
25. Texas had seceded on February i, but the delays of 
travel prevented her delegates from reaching Montgomery 
until the initial tasks of the convention had been completed. 
Howell Cobb was made president of the convention, and the 
delegates set to work with such vigor that within four days 
they had framed and adopted a Provisional Constitution 
for the Confederate States of America. This was mod- 
eled roughly upon the Constitution of the United States, 
but along with other variations it provided that the exist- 
ing convention should constitute the Congress of the pro- 
visional government and should elect the provisional 
President and Vice-President. Although the several delega- 
tions varied in size in accordance with the numbers of 
Senators and Congressmen which the respective states 
had had at Washington, the prevailing deference to the 
doctrine of state sovereignty led to the insertion of a clause 
that each state should have but one vote. 

On the same day that the Provisional Constitution was 
adopted, February 8, the Congress resolved that it would 
proceed on the morrow to the election of a President and 
Vice-President of the Confederate States. Previous to this 
time there seems to have been little or no discussion in 
regard to the presidency. E. A. Pollard, it is true, relates 



SOUTHERN INDEPENDENCE 223 

that the Senators from the seceding states conspired in sup- 
port of Davis before they left Washington; * but this con- 
spiracy probably existed only in Pollard's imagination. 
Howell Cobb, for example, wrote from Montgomery on 
February 6 to his wife regarding the presidential prospect: 
"There is no effort made to put forward any man, but all 
seem to desire in everything to do what is best to be done 
to advance and prosper the cause of our independence." 
In the same letter Cobb wrote: "I rather think Jeff Davis 
will be the man, though I have not heard anyone say he is 
for him." Stephens, however, believed then and afterward 
that Toombs was the favorite. 

The procedure followed was such as to facilitate a mis- 
carriage of the general will. Everyone was anxious to avoid 
discord or the appearance thereof. It was hoped that the 
first ballot in the Congress would result in the unanimous 
election of a President; and every delegation was accordingly 
very sensitive to the real or fancied preference of every other 
one. Yet there was little open canvassing. Each dele- 
gation met in private conference to determine the candidate 
for whom it would vote; and none of them except that from 
Georgia made official inquiry concerning the preferences of 
other delegations, but each acted in the light of such 
information as its members had chanced to receive. Under 
such conditions if any members of the Congress should desire 
to procure the election of any candidate, they would be 
strongly tempted to jockey the election, particularly if 
they were members of the Georgia delegation. No con- 
temporaneous writer except T. R. R. Cobb appears quite 
to intimate that any jockeying was done. He attributed 
intrigue to the supporters of Stephens; but his account con- 
tradicts itself in regard to the attitude of the majority in 
the Georgia delegation, and otherwise discredits itself by 

* E. A. Pollard, Life of Jefferson Davis, with a Secret History of the South- 
ern Confederacy, Atlanta, Ga., [1869], pp. 97-100. 



224 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

its display of strong animus.* The account written by 
Stephens at a somewhat later time appears to be the best 
available.! Both of these accounts agree that the Georgia 
delegation, a most influential one, was faction-split; and it 
appears that the majority of its members, including partic- 
ularly Stephens and Crawford, were in favor of Toombs's 
election, while a minority, including T. R. R, Cobb and 
Bartow, supported Howell Cobb. According to Stephens, 
the delegations from South Carolina, Florida, Alabama and 
Louisiana were also understood to be for Toombs, while 
that from Mississippi was disposed to push Davis for the 
chief command in the army rather than for the presidency. 
T. R. R. Cobb wrote two days after the election: "On the 
night the Constitution was adopted and an election ordered 
for the next day at" twelve o'clock we had a 'counting of 
noses' and found that Alabama, Mississippi and Florida 
were in favor of Davis — Louisiana and Georgia for Howell, 
South Carolina divided between Howell and Davis, with 
Memminger and Withers wavering. Howell immediately 
announced his wish that Davis should be unanimously 
elected." It seems very probable that Stephens's analysis 
of the preliminary alignment is the more trustworthy. 

All or nearly all of the delegations except that from 
Georgia held their presidential conferences on the night of 
February 8, while the conference of the Georgia delegation 
was put off until ten o'clock on the morning of the ninth. 
When it then assembled, Stephens proposed the nomination 
of Toombs for President, and in reply to interrogation 
Toombs said he would accept if the office were cordially 
offered him. Thereupon T. R. R. Cobb and Bartow gave 
the news that the delegations from all the other states except 
Mississippi had held their conferences and had resolved to 

* Letters of T. R. R. Cobb, Montgomery, Ala., Feb. 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11, 

1861, to his wife. Southern History Association Publications, XI, 163-172. 

t Documents printed in Johnston and Browne, Stephens, pp. 389-391. 



SOUTHERN INDEPENDENCE 225 

support Davis. Toombs was surprised at this and incred- 
ulous. The delegation then appointed Crawford a committee 
to ascertain the truth of the report. When he returned with 
its confirmation the Georgians resolved to present no candi- 
date for the presidency but to propose Stephens for Vice- 
President. The Congress assembled at noon and Davis 
and Stephens were unanimously elected. It afterwards 
transpired, according to Stephens's account, that someone 
had informed all the other delegations prior to their confer- 
ences that the Georgia delegation intended to propose Howell 
Cobb rather than Toombs for President; and those dele- 
gations, disapproving this choice but wishing to avoid the 
friction which might arise if they should endorse a Georgian 
whom his colleagues had left aside, adopted Davis instead. 
In actual qualifications for the office Howell Cobb was prob- 
ably not inferior to any man in the South. Free from the 
repellent reserve of Davis, the irritating over-positiveness of 
Toombs, the disquieting hostility to compromise of Yancey, 
the timidity of Hunter and the querulousness of Stephens, 
he was one of the most generally esteemed public men of his 
time. That his virtues were far from negative was demon- 
strated by at least three powerful public utterances: his 
public letter to W. W. Hull advocating the Clay compro- 
mise in 1850, his address to the people of Georgia advocating 
secession in i860, and his "bush-arbor" speech at Atlanta 
opposing the Republican programme of reconstruction in 
1868. Cobb, however, had been out of Congress virtually 
ever since 1851 and had had little share in shaping the sec- 
tional issue. His name was accordingly not conspicuous in 
the popular discussion of the Confederate Presidency, and 
the Provisional Congress apparently had little serious 
thought of electing him. 

A tradition current in parts of Georgia runs to the effect 
that Toombs's prospects of election as President were 
blighted by his intoxication at a banquet during the early 



226 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

sessions at Montgomery. This may be possibly a true 
explanation. It is more probably the fruit of the laying of 
gossips' heads together, attempting by conjecture to explain 
the outcome of the election. Aside from the fact well known 
in the period that in Hquors what was moderation for others 
was excess for Toombs, no tangible basis for the rumor 
appears. 

For weal or woe the choice was made between Davis the 
"army Senator," the militarist occasionally taking a hand 
in popular problems, and Toombs the constant guardian of 
the treasury and of citizens' rights; between Davis the schol- 
arly, theoretical, self-contained, patrician orator, and Toombs 
the sage, concrete, transparently frank, democratic debater; 
between Davis the unapproachable martinet and Toombs 
the easily accessible, vehement contemner of red tape; be- 
tween the neuralgic, half-invalid Davis, and the robust, 
leonine Toombs. Toombs had labored more zealously and 
more steadily for Southern rights and Southern unity, and 
had been for years the more popularly esteemed. Davis 
had recently come into public notice by his warfare upon 
Douglas, which had split the Democratic party, against the 
desire of Toombs to preserve its unity and ascendency in 
the Union. The success of this exploit by Davis in the 
spring of i860 forced Toombs to choose between unwelcome 
alternatives and to become apparently a trailer in Davis's 
wake. Thus Davis had for the time being an air of estab- 
lished leadership in the Lower South; and this was prob- 
ably responsible, along with the bungling procedure at 
Montgomery, for his election as President. Both of these 
men were high-principled, courageous, devoted, and in their 
proper spheres efficient. To vest each of them with the 
functions best suited to his talents was a paramount neces- 
sity, and the failure to accomplish it was a capital error. 
While Davis would have made without doubt an efficient 
commander of a Confederate army, Toombs would probably 



SOUTHERN INDEPENDENCE 227 

have made a far superior President of the Confederate 
States. While Davis appears to have aspired chiefly to 
military command in the Southern service, Toombs, through 
never having wanted any other administrative office, aspired 
to the Southern Presidency His disappointment was none 
the less keen because unspoken, and it probably diminished 
his self-control, increased his petulance, and impaired his 
subsequent usefulness as a public servant. There was, how- 
ever, no slightest flagging in his eagerness to promote the 
vindication of Southern independence in any capacity which 
might be assigned him and by all the means within his 
command. 

It appears that Davis realized that Toombs would be 
most useful at the head of the Confederate treasury, but 
offered him the portfolio of state instead because it was the 
ranking position in the cabinet. In this the President- was 
led by punctilio into one of the first of his blunders. He 
himself had no experience or talent in public finance, and 
his one chance to save the government from financial dis- 
aster lay in assigning not only the office of Secretary of the 
Treasury but the full control of fiscal policy to the ablest 
and most influential financier available. Memminger, 
whom he appointed, had excellent intentions but little talent 
and less influence upon Congress. In consequence the 
finances were tragically mismanaged throughout the war, 
speculators were fattened upon the public adversity, and 
the invincible Confederate army was eventually and quite 
unnecessarily starved into collapse. 

Toombs was reluctant to accept the profl^ered office. He 
had been in unpleasant friction with Davis on several occa- 
sions in previous years, chiefly over questions of military 
appropriations in Congress. The extent to which one of 
these went is suggested in a letter of Toombs from Wash- 
ington, Ga., March 30, 1857, to his friend W. W. Burwell: 
"I am obliged for the kind interest you take in my afi^air 



228 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

with Davis. I am glad it is settled, and the mode is one 
to which from the attitude I have held in the matter I could 
at no time [have] objected." Toombs's reluctance to take 
the secretaryship of state, however, may have been entirely 
due to his belief that he was better able and more needed 
to handle problems of finance than those of diplomacy. 
Yielding to Stephens's persuasion he accepted the port- 
folio of state, taking the oath of office on February 27. At 
the same time he retained his seat in the Provisional Con- 
gress, and throughout the spring he wrought indefatigably 
in the performance of whatever services he could find to 
render, whether in official or unofficial capacity. 

The chief task of the Congress in February and early 
March was to frame a Permanent Constitution for the Con- 
federate States. Toombs and T. R. R. Cobb were appointed 
as Georgia's quota upon the committee on the Permanent 
Constitution, while Rhett of South Carolina was made its 
chairman. It was generally agreed that the Constitution 
of the United States should be used as a pattern, but many 
proposals were made for its modification. "Tom" Cobb's 
proposals were those of a Sabbatarian religionist and a foe 
of the African slave-trade; but Toombs was concerned with 
ensuring the utmost responsibility and efficiency in the gov- 
ernment. He and Stephens and Howell Cobb labored 
earnestly to provide membership in Congress for cabinet 
members in assimilation as far as possible of the British 
system of ministerial responsibility. Stephens claimed chief 
merit in this connection; but Stephens was a chronic magni- 
fier of his own importance.* The purpose of the proposal 
was virtually defeated by the adoption merely of a clause 
providing that "Congress may by law grant to the principal 
officer in each of the Executive departments a seat upon the 
floor of either House, with the privilege of discussing any 

* Cf. his autobiographical sketch in his Recollections, Myrta L. Avary 
ed., pp. 15-29. 



SOUTHERN INDEPENDENCE 229 

measures appertaining to his department." Had the pro- 
posed ministerial system been adopted Cabinet and Congress 
would probably have combined their strength and have 
given the country the benefit of their collective abilities. 
Its rejection enabled President Davis to erect a dictatorship 
destructive alike to the power of Cabinet and Congress and 
regardless of public opinion. The rest of Toombs's proposals 
were financial in their bearing, and these were adopted. 
Some of them forbade Congress to grant bounties, or to pay 
extra allowances to public contractors, or to appropriate 
money for building roads or canals; and another provided 
that Congress should make no general appropriations 
except by a two-thirds vote of both Houses unless the 
expenditure had been recommended and estimated by a 
member of the Cabinet.* Toombs was probably the author 
also of the provision requiring that the post-ofl5ce must live 
upon its own earnings after its first two years of operation. 
On the other hand the prohibition of protective tariffs, the 
extension of the President's term to six years with ineligi- 
bility for reelection, and the clause providing for amend- 
ments were proposed by Rhett. The authorship of the 
clause permitting the levy of export duties appears not 
to be ascertainable. In view of the peculiar nature and 
resources of the cotton industry this clause would have had 
immense potentialities if the new nation could have achieved 
a peaceful career. Many other modifications and innova- 
tions were proposed, some of them radical in character; and 
it was feared for a time by Toombs, Stephens and other 
moderate men that some dangerous provisions would be 
incorporated. The Constitution as framed, however, was 
a thoroughly sane document embodying remedies for nearly 
all the defects which down to that time had been discovered 

* J. L. M. Curry, in the Memorial Volume of Howell Cobb, S. Boykin ed., 
Atlanta, Ga., 1870, p. 265; Johnston and Browne, Stephens, p. 393; Ste- 
phens, War Between the States, II, 338, 339; Stovall, Toombs, pp. 219, 220. 



230 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

in the Constitution of the United States. It was unani- 
mously adopted by the Congress on March ii and promptly 
ratified unanimously by the several states comprising the 
Confederacy. 

Meanwhile military and diplomatic affairs were develop- 
ing. The Provisional Congress had made initial provisions 
for the raising of money, had begun to take control of the 
military resources, and by resolutions had directed the 
President to take steps to acquire possession of Forts Sumter 
and Pickens and to appoint three commissioners to be sent 
to Washington to negotiate a treaty of amity with the 
government of the United States. Davis appointed A. B. 
Roman, Martin J. Crawford and John Forsyth on this 
commission, February 25. Toombs promptly gave them 
their instructions, and until the end of their mission at the 
middle of April kept in almost daily touch with them by 
letters and telegrams.* The early reports of these com- 
missioners led Toombs and his colleagues at Montgomery 
to hope for the avoidance of war. But as weeks passed 
the peaceful prospect faded, until at length the Confederate 
commissioners, having never received ofiicial recognition at 
Washington, were directed to publish their correspondence 
with Secretary Seward as a vindication and return home. 
The Confederate government also sent commissioners to 
the European governments and to Mexico and the West 
Indies. Toombs wrote a series of excellent state papers as 
instructions to these agents, and throughout his tenure of 
the portfolio of state he held such communications with 
them as conditions would permit. f Toombs also of course 
despatched and instructed commissioners to the several 
states of the Upper South whose governments and people 

* A number of these are preserved among the Pickett papers in the 
Library of Congress. 

t Some of these documents are published in J. D. Richardson, Messages 
and Papers of the Confederacy, Nashville, 1905, II, 1-48. 



SOUTHERN INDEPENDENCE 231 

were confronting the alternative of joining the movement 
for a Southern nationahty or of cHnging to the hope of a 
restored Union with the possible dread corollary of joining 
in a war of coercion against sister Southern states. But 
before anything of moment could be accomplished through 
any of these diplomatic channels actual war intervened. 



CHAPTER X 
THE STRESS OF WAR 

TO a multitude of Southerners in the early months of 
'6i war seemed highly improbable. For example, 
Raphael Semmes, afterward famous as the commander of 
the cruiser Alabama, wrote to Howell Cobb near the end of 
January: 

"I would advise . . . that both your navy and army lists 
be kept within very small compass. I mean the regular 
forces of each, or such as are to be kept on foot in peace as 
well as in war. ... I do not think we shall have a war. . . . 
If the border states join you the old confederacy will be split 
nearly in half, and the idea of coercion would be simply 
ridiculous; if they do not join you, being retained by com- 
promises that will satisfy them, they will be a barrier and a 
safeguard to you and will hold the hands of the Vandals who 
might otherwise be disposed to make war upon you." 

To another multitude war seemed to wear a smiling 
countenance. They believed with enthusiasm and exalta- 
tion in the justice of their cause and in the martial prowess 
of their people. They commonly overrated the power of 
"King Cotton" and the good will of Europe, and underrated 
the combativeness and the vastly superior wealth and popu- 
lation of the North. The prospect of blockade most of them 
completely ignored. 

Tradition relates that Toombs said in November and 
December, i860, that he would drink all the blood that would 
be shed in a war of Southern independence. He advocated 
vigorous military preparations, however, as the best 
means of preventing war, and he lent a hand wherever he 



THESTRESSOFWAR 233 

could in the following months to promote the organization 
and equipment of a powerful volunteer force. In March 
his optimism was probably sustained by the early reports 
from the Confederate commissioners at Washington, but 
he abated no efforts for preparedness. For example, while 
he was in Savannah for a brief participation in the adjust- 
ment of the Georgia constitution to that of the Confederacy 
and for the closing of the adjourned session of the conven- 
tion, he mediated successfully between the governor of 
Georgia and the Confederate military authorities and pro- 
cured the despatch of a thousand Georgia troops to join in 
the operations against Fort Pickens.* Early in April the 
tone of the reports from Washington indicated a stronger 
prospect of war. The Confederate commissioners notified 
Toombs, for example, on April 2: "The war wing presses 
on the President: he vibrates to that side. . . . Their form 
of notice to us may be that of the coward who gives it when 
he strikes. Watch at all points." f 

The situation clearly called for the firmest control by 
those in responsible positions, for the most delicate weighing 
of policies, and for the most adroit diplomacy. Negotia- 
tion, self-control and patience might yet secure full recogni- 
tion and great prosperity for the new nation, while war 
would jeopardize everything, particularly if the Confederate 
government should by any deed rouse and unite the people 
of the North in aggressive resolution. None saw these 
things more clearly than did Toombs. On the one hand, as 
Roger Pryor said at Charleston, the striking of a blow would 
bring Virginia into the Confederacy, and other hesita- 
ting states along with her. On the other hand the main- 
tenance of peace would in the long run bring most of the 
Southern border states into the Confederacy through the 
operation of the sentiment of kinship and of the perception 

* Toombs to L. P. Walker, Confederate Secretary of War, Mch. 21, l86l. 
t fFar of the Rebellion Official Records, Ser. I, vol. I, p. 284. 



234 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

that by entering the Southern union their people would gain 
the same advantage from the trade of the cotton belt which 
the people of the North had customarily enjoyed from the 
trade of the South. And in the interim, so long as the border 
states continued in the old Union, the Confederacy would 
possess a strong group of friends in the Federal Congress. 
It is true that from the necessary point of view of the Con- 
federate government the United States was technically 
levying war by holding military tenure of Forts Sumter 
and Pickens; but the Sumter garrison could easily be starved 
into surrender, and Pickens would in the long run be a 
profitless possession for the United States, Toombs was 
here as always disposed to waive technicalities for the more 
successful pursuit of great objects. His attitude toward 
the problem of the forts was characteristic of him. He 
advised that batteries be erected, that troops be assembled, 
and all preparations made to reduce the forts in the event 
of Lincoln's initiating hostilities, but he urgently deprecated 
any act of Confederate aggression. 

The question reached its culmination in the Confederate 
Cabinet meeting following the receipt on April 9 of Lincoln's 
notification to the South Carolina authorities that he would 
attempt to replenish the supplies of the little Sumter garri- 
son. Toombs entered the Cabinet meeting after the dis- 
cussion had begun. Upon learning the trend of the 
discussion and reading the telegram from Charleston, he said: 
"The firing on that fort will inaugurate a civil war greater 
than any the world has yet seen; and I do not feel competent 
to advise you." * While the discussion proceeded he paced 
the floor with hands behind him and head lowered in thought. 
At length he expressed his disapproval of the contemplated 
bombardment. "Mr. President," he is reported to have 
said, "at this time it is suicide, murder, and will lose us 

* L. P. Walker to Crawford, in S. W. Crawford, The Genesis of the Civil 
War, N. Y., 1887, p. 421. 



THESTRESSOFWAR 235 

every friend at the North. You will wantonly strike a 
hornets' nest which extends from mountains to ocean; and 
legions, now quiet, will swarm out and sting us to death. It 
is unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal." * Davis 
however, decided in favor of attack, and through Secretary 
Walker sent a telegram on the morning of April 10 to Beaure- 
gard in command of the Confederate forces at Charleston 
directing him to demand the evacuation of the fort and in 
case of refusal to reduce it in such manner as he might deter- 
mine. Major Anderson declined to evacuate, but said that 
he would be starved out in a few days if Beauregard did 
not batter him to pieces. Beauregard telegraphed this to 
Montgomery and in reply on the same day, April 11, was 
authorized to refrain from attack if Anderson would set a 
date for evacuation and pledge himself not to open fire on 
the Confederates meanwhile. Beauregard sent notice of 
this to the fort shortly after midnight of April 11-12, and 
empowered the four aides who carried the message. Chest- 
nut, Chisolm, Pryor and Stephen D. Lee, to determine 
whether the reply to be received were satisfactory. Ander- 
son replied at 3.15 a. m., after a council of war, that he would 
evacuate the fort by noon on April 15, and if not attacked 
meanwhile would not fire upon the Confederate forces, should 
he not receive controlling instructions from Washington, or 
additional supplies. Beauregard's aides peremptorily rejected 
these terms and notified Anderson that fire would be opened 
upon him in an hour's time. Thus Davis delegated to 
Beauregard the decision as to beginning'^open warfare, and 
Beauregard delegated it to four subordinates, at least one 
and perhaps all of whom were advocates of war for the sake 
of its effect upon the border states. During the bombard- 
ment which came with daybreak on April 12 a part of 
Lincoln's provisioning fleet appeared off Charleston harbor; 
but the tugs upon which it depended for transferring supplies 
* Stovall, Toombs, p. 226. 



236 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

to the fort had been blown away by a storm. In any event 
the fort could not have been provisioned against the resist- 
ance of the Confederate batteries. Accordingly fire was 
opened under circumstances which made it seem to the 
doubting element in the North a gratuitous onslaught. On 
the one hand it brought Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee 
and Arkansas into the Confederacy; on the other hand it 
fulfilled Toombs's prophecy by stirring up the Northern 
hornets' nest to an extent which could have been accomplished 
in hardly any other way. The Confederacy's problem was 
bungled and the war was begun in the way least favorable 
for the South, Few were disposed to vain regrets, however, 
and certainly not the indomitable Toombs. The people, 
the army, and the government, after a brief rejoicing over 
Sumter's downfall, turned their thoughts to the more formi- 
dable military problems of the future. 

The following weeks were crowded with salient events: 
Lincoln's call for volunteers, Davis's proclamation offering 
letters of marque, Lincoln's proclamation of blockade, the 
secession of additional states, above mentioned, the transfer 
of the Confederate capital to Richmond, the Federal evacua- 
tion of the Norfolk navy yard and the Harper's Ferry arsenal, 
the uprising of Southern sympathizers in Baltimore and the 
beginning of field manoeuvres in Northern Virginia. Toombs 
was performing the routine duties of his ofl&ce and assisting 
in the raising of loans and the organization of troops. Yet 
he could not find outlet for his tremendous energy, and he 
chafed at the limitations which his office imposed upon him. 
As Secretary of State he was merely the President's chief 
clerk for the quite seldom diplomatic correspondence. He 
could formulate and pursue no policies which did not com- 
mend themselves to Davis's somewhat capricious judgment. 
His heart was with the army in the field, and at length when 
the prospect of a pitched battle became imminent he found 
the restraints of his ornamental civilian capacity unbearable 



THESTRESSOFWAR 237 

and applied for an appointment in the army. His com- 
mission as brigadier-general was issued on July 19, 1861. 
Two days later, pending his assignment to a command, the 
battle of Manassas was fought and won; but in spite of the 
advice of Stonewall Jackson and others, including Toombs, 
the routed enemy was not pursued. 

Toombs is quoted as having said that he carried the 
archives of the Department of State in his own hat. There 
appears, however, to have been some work necessary to put 
affairs in shape for his successor, R. M. T. Hunter, and 
Toombs did not resign until July 24. His family and some 
of his friends were endeavoring earnestly to dissuade him 
from military service. His brother Gabriel, for example, 
wrote to Stephens, July 31, to enlist his help in the effort 
at dissuasion. Deprecating Toombs's military qualifica- 
tions and his fitness to withstand the exposures of camp life, 
he concluded with a touching personal allusion: "While I 
am entirely independent of my brother in the sense the world 
calls independent, no mortal was ever more dependent upon 
another for happiness than I am upon him." 

But these appeals were fruitless. Too many prominent 
men, said Toombs, were seeking bomb-proof positions, and 
he was resolved not to be among them. Furthermore, he 
did not wish to remain in an administration whose policy 
he could neither influence nor approve. Nine-tenths of war 
was business, said he, and the business incapacity of the 
government was already becoming palpable. It timidly 
relied upon borrowing rather than upon taxation, although 
the people were clamoring to be taxed; it indolently neglected 
to develop its financial resource in cotton while there was 
yet time; and it was too frugal by far in its purchases of 
arms, ammunition and ships. This deprived the Confederacy 
of military lasting-power and made a victorious outcome of 
the war depend upon a series of tours deforce at its beginning. 
All available men were immediately needed in the field for 



238 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

the aggressive strategy which the financial passiveness made 
imperative. 

Toombs was in due time put into command of a brigade 
comprising three Georgia infantry regiments, later increased 
to five, incorporated in what became Longstreet's corps of 
the Army of Northern Virginia. His sons-in-law Dudley 
M. DuBose and W, F. Alexander were among his aides, and 
several of his prominent long-time friends, including Linton 
Stephens, were in regimental command. Indeed a large pro- 
portion of the company captains and lieutenants and even 
sergeants, corporals and privates were among their general's 
neighbors and personal friends in the former peaceful years. 
The brigade was in a sense a Middle-Georgia clan freshly 
called to arms and commanded by its own chief. 

These recruits were far from having the discipline of 
regulars; but for aggressive purposes under the existing 
circumstances their abundant elan would have largely offset 
their lack of technical training. In this they were typical 
of the whole Confederate army, which was much better 
fitted for fighting than for waiting. But Joseph E. Johnston, 
who was in chief command in northern Virginia, was an 
over-cautious disciplinarian. He kept the army in camp 
about Manassas Junction, drilling the regiments week after 
week and month after month while McClellan was perform- 
ing similar work, but much more vitally necessary, with the 
Federal forces about Washington. Scores of the Confederate 
officers of all ranks, and thousands of the troops chafed at 
the restrictions of camp life and fell ill from the dull work 
of daily drill under the scorching August sun and from the 
unsanitary conditions prevailing. Privates, often with 
good reason, thought themselves as capable strategists as 
their generals, and amateur officers began to look with scorn 
at the seeming timidity of the West Pointers in authority. 

Toombs was perhaps the most conspicuous of the aggres- 
sive civilian brigadiers. For the time being he was on good 



THESTRESSOFWAR 239 

terms with President Davis, and contented himself with 
recommending aggression. For example, he wrote from 
Manassas to the President on September i, saying that he 
was enjoying camp life, studying tactics and finding it com- 
paratively reposeful after the activity of the past six months. 
He thought the enemy was now weak and that the Con- 
federacy should make vigorous use of its twelve-months men 
before the time should come for winter quarters. He 
advised an invasion of Maryland between Leesburg and 
Martinsburg so as to cut the enemy's connection with the 
North and cause Washington to fall without a blow, or make 
him fight on ground of Confederate choosing. McClellan's 
negative policy, he thought, demonstrated his weakness. 
Davis of course did not see his way clear to force Johnston 
to carry out the plan which Toombs proposed; and Toombs 
soon began to rail more or less openly at Johnston, Davis 
and all West Pointers, later including, regrettably, Robert 
E. Lee. 

According to the prevailing opinion among modern mili- 
tary critics the plan of aggressive action which Toombs was 
advocating in the late summer and fall of 1861 was the 
soundest which the Confederacy could have adopted. And 
his prophecies of inactivity on the part of the Confederate 
commanders were but too well justified. Instead of advanc- 
ing, Johnston fell back from Fairfax Court House to the 
field of Manassas at the middle of October, with a view to 
inviting McClellan to attack him in his intrenchments along 
the line of Bull Run. But McClellan, the master pro- 
crastinator, marched and countermarched and sighed for 
bad weather to justify his going into winter quarters. In 
December he fell sick; and in spite of excellent midwinter 
weather, both armies lay passive until March. 

During the army's idle season Toombs went to Richmond 
from time to time to participate briefly in the proceedings 
of the Provisional Congress, of which he was still a member. 



240 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

Repudiating the phantasm of cotton's "kingship," he 
deplored and resisted the tendency toward cotton loans, 
produce taxes, excessive issues of notes and bonds, and all 
other financial makeshifts. He persistently advocated 
heavy taxation as the only possible means for the equable 
distribution of the burden of the war and for the mainte- 
nance of the government's credit; and he contended that 
in general the government should refrain to the utmost from 
disturbing the normal course of industry, commerce and 
banking. To follow his plan, he maintained, would be to 
promote the prosperity of the government and the citizens 
at the same time. On the other hand, the loan of unsalable 
cotton by the planters to the government, he declared, would 
be futile; and the policies of issuing paper money in increas- 
ing quantities, of floating bonds by any and all expedients 
conceivable, of paternalistic regulation of industry, and of 
impressing army supplies at arbitrary prices he condemned 
as tending irretrievably to penalize patriotism, alienate the 
good will of the people, bankrupt the government, and pros- 
trate the army. The majority in this Congress and its 
successors, however, largely controlled by Davis, persisted 
in these temporizing, irresponsible and ruinous policies. 

When in November, 1861, the Georgia legislature was 
about to elect two Senators to serve the state in the first 
Congress under the Permanent Constitution of the Con- 
federacy, an anonymous communication was published 
giving assurance that Toombs would accept a seat in the 
Senate if elected, and urging that "this great tribune of the 
people" be not kept hidden "under a brigadier's commission 
away on the frontier where his transcendent ability is of no 
avail to the country." * The election was made by joint 
ballot of the two houses, November 19. For the first seat 
Toombs and B. H. Hill were nominated; and Hill was elected 

* Card signed "Justice," in the Southern Federal Union (Milledgeville, 
Ga.), Nov. 19, 1861. 



THESTRESSOFWAR 241 

on the first ballot by 127 votes to 68. On the second call 
for nominations Alfred Iverson, James Jackson and John P. 
King were proposed in addition to Toombs. For the first 
two ballots Iverson led; but after a noon recess Toombs took 
the lead, and after the withdrawal of Iverson's name at the 
close of the fifth ballot Toombs was elected on the sixth by 
129 votes to d'j for Jackson.* 

The legislature's reluctance to send Toombs to the Senate 
was partly due to a desire to avoid embarrassing Davis's 
administration and partly to the dislike of heavy taxation, 
which has been common to all popular governments in time 
of great military exertions and was as conspicuous in the 
American Revolution as during the war for Southern inde- 
pendence. Toombs had probably hoped to be elected to 
the Senate by a vote so nearly unanimous as to give his 
policies the support of an enthusiastic mandate. Without 
such endorsement he could hope to have little influence as 
compared with that of the administration. Furthermore 
the lack of provision for the publication of speeches and votes 
in Congress would prevent the Senate from being an adequate 
forum through which to appeal to the people. Davis had 
already been elected as President, along with Stephens in 
the negligible office of Vice-President, for the full term of six 
years under the Permanent Constitution. Under these 
circumstances the hope was slight for successful opposition 
to the Davis policies without crippling the government. 
Toombs of course desired by all means to invigorate the 
government and stimulate the popular support of the war. 
At the same time he still cherished the hope of rendering 
distinguished service as a soldier. In spite, therefore, of the 
anonymous pledge of his acceptance, he declined the senator- 
ship. He suff"ered the tortures of Tantalus in witnessing 
the costly passiveness of the Confederate government and 
the Confederate army, seeing full well the increasing prospect 
* Southern Federal Union, Nov. 20, 1861. 



242 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

of blight upon Southern hopes. And not the least of his 
distresses arose from his own compulsory idleness and im- 
potence for service. 

The series of reverses which the Confederacy met from 
November to February at Port Royal, Roanoke Island, Fort 
Henry and Fort Donelson, spurred Toombs, M. J. Crawford 
and the two Cobbs to issue a joint address to the people of 
Georgia just before the expiration of the provisional govern- 
ment.^ This set forth the "unpalatable facts" of the great 
superiority of the enemy in men and money and the faint- 
ness of the prospect of foreign intervention, but expressed 
confidence in the outcome if, as it urged, the people would 
unite in an unconquerable resolution of the most drastic 
resistance to subjugation.* 

The approach of winter's end carried Toombs back to 
his full military routine. By this time McClellan had 
assembled nearly half a million men about Washington and 
drilled and equipped them so well that even he could hardly 
find excuses for further delay; and Johnston prudently fell 
back from Manassas, March 7, and intrenched himself 
behind the Rapidan and Rappahannock. Toombs wrote 
home from Culpeper describing the retreat and censuring 
its policy. "We have got to fight them somewhere," said 
he, "and if I had my way I would fight them on the first 
inch of our soil they invaded, and never cease to fight them 
as long as I could rally men to defend their homes." f 

At the beginning of April McClellan ended the long un- 
certainty as to the field of operations by landing near Old 
Point Comfort with an army of one hundred thousand men. 
Johnston hastened to cover Richmond, and then when 
McClellan sat down to besiege Yorktown instead of making 
forced marches against the capital, several Confederate 
brigades were sent down the peninsula to strengthen the 

* Frank Moore, ed., The Rebellion Record, IV, 192, 193. 
I Stovall, Toombs, pp. 239, 240. 



THESTRESSOFWAR 243 

observation-force already there. Howell Cobb, then recently 
promoted from colonel to brigadier, wrote his wife from camp 
near Yorktown, April 15: "General Toombs and his com- 
mand arrived on the peninsula yesterday. We have 
Georgians enough here now to whip the Yankees if we had 
to do the whole work ourselves. But the whole army is a 
noble one — as I believe, the greatest army for its size ever 
assembled on this continent." 

But the Confederate commanders once more refrained 
from battle and ordered a gradual retreat up the peninsula 
ahead of McClellan. Toombs's brigade grumbled at the 
wasting of opportunities for fighting, and Toombs was more 
exasperated than his men.* Of course he had no inkling of 
the strategy already in preparation by Johnston, Lee and 
Jackson which duly led to McClellan's rout and narrowly 
missed destroying his great army. Toombs had grown 
morose from steady reflection upon the shortcomings of those 
in civil and military authority, and he was beginning to show 
conspicuously the typical failings of the civilian officer. 
In Congress he had been accustomed to argue with and 
criticize his colleagues, and occasionally to carry a point by 
dogged opposition to those in control. He could not learn 
that the army was not a debating society for the brigadiers. 
He was so firmly convinced of the superlative value of his 
own ideas of grand strategy that he could not refrain from 
making himself obnoxious by his censures upon all, regardless 
of rank, who rejected his proposals or who fell short of his 
exalted requirements of aggressiveness and efficiency. 

After two long months of retreating, skirmishing and 
waiting, Toombs participated in the tremendous onslaught 
at Gaines's Mill, June 27, the bloody pursuit of the routed 
McClellan, and the ill-managed attack upon the Federals 
at bay on Malvern Hill, July i. But unfortunately his 
brigade was given no work to do but that of the most trying 
* E.g. letter to Stephens, May 17, 1862. 



244 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

character and under the most adverse conditions. As a 
culmination he was ordered at Malvern Hill to make a 
charge, poorly supported, over six hundred yards of clear 
ground against impregnable intrenchments under terrific 
artillery fire from McClellan's field-batteries in front and 
his gunboats in the rear. D. H. Hill who with Magruder 
led this charge, in imperfect execution of Lee's injudicious 
command, said in his official report, "It was not war, it was 
murder." * When half-way up the long hill, Toombs, 
seeing that his brigade was unsupported and had begun to 
straggle badly, commanded his troops to march obliquely 
to the left and lie down under such protection as a con- 
venient rail fence afforded. Shortly afterward D. H. Hill 
rode up to Toombs, upbraided him, and ordered him forward. 
Toombs then resumed the advance, but his brigade, suffer- 
ing heavy losses, was thrown into confusion by stragglers, 
and like the others in the attack was obliged to retire from 
the hopeless attempt. Toombs thought that he had been 
gratuitously insulted for attempt to save his men from useless 
slaughter, and after the battle he demanded satisfaction 
from Hill. Hill refused to apologize and declined Toombs's 
challenge to a duel, and Toombs continued to nurse his 
grievances. t In a letter to Stephens from camp near Rich- 
mond, July 14, narrating his recent experiences and reiterating 
his resentment and disgust, he charged Davis and the regular 
army with conspiring for the destruction of all who would not 
bend to them, and he declared in conclusion: "I shall leave 
the army the instant I can do so without dishonor." 

Lee, who had succeeded to the chief command after John- 
ston was wounded on May 31, soon began a northward 
movement which was to lead to the battles of Second 
Manassas and Antietam. Misfortune continued to pursue 
Toombs in the early stages of this advance. For a trivial 

* War of the Rebellion Official Records, Series I, vol. II, part 2, p. 629. 
t The correspondence is published in Stovall, Toombs, pp. 254-258. 



THESTRESSOFWAR 245 

disobedience of orders when his brigade was near the Rapidan 
Longstreet ordered him under arrest,* and only granted his 
release in time for him to reach his brigade while it was 
under fire at Manassas. It is said that Toombs then dashed 
up, waving his hat, and shouted, "Go it, boys! I am with 
you again. Jeff Davis can make a general but it takes God 
Almighty to make a soldier." Longstreet in his report of 
the battle commended him for gallant action, f It was at 
Antietam, however, that Toombs found at last an oppor- 
tunity for work of conspicuous merit. There, with two 
skeleton regiments totalling 350 men, he held the stone 
bridge on Lee's right throughout the morning of September 
17 against repeated heavy attacks by Burnside's vastly 
greater force, until about one o'clock when, with its flank 
turned and its ammunition exhausted, the little Confederate 
detachment was withdrawn. During the same afternoon 
Toombs launched a counter-attack in another part of the 
field and restored the Confederate alignment where it had 
been broken and disaster was imminent, f During a continu- 
ance of the fighting next day his left hand was shattered by 
a rifle-ball; and when Lee withdrew his army from Mary- 
land to resume the defensive, Toombs went home on leave. 
He returned to his brigade in February, 1863, at Fredericks- 
burg, but only to say farewell. He resigned his command 
at the beginning of March; and his resignation was accepted, 
March 4, although General Beauregard § and others advised 
an attempt at retaining his services by a promotion to a 
major-generalcy. On March 5 Toombs issued a farewell 
address to his brigade, praising its patriotism and bravery, 

* Letter of Toombs to Stephens, Aug. 22, 1862; for Longstreet's account 
see his From Manassas to Appomattox, pp. 161, 166. 

t Stovall, Toombs, p. 261. 

J James Longstreet, From Manassas to Appomattox, pp. 257-262; Stov- 
all, Toombs, pp. 265-268; War of the Rebellion Official Records, series I, vol. 
51, pp. 161-165. 

§ War of the Rebellion Official Records, series I, vol. 14, p. 826. 



246 THE LIFE OF ROBERTTOOMBS 

and saying as regards himself: "Under existing circum- 
stances, in my judgment, I could no longer hold my com- 
mission under President Davis with advantage to my country 
or to you, or with honor to myself." 

It cannot be said that Toombs's retirement was a great 
loss to the army. On the other hand, as he had already 
found to his chagrin, there was little opportunity in those 
times that tried men's souls for him to render valuable ser- 
vice outside the military service. His conception of the 
proper function of government was so widely at variance 
with the policies of the Davis administration that he could 
not cease to make protests, even though they were fore- 
doomed to be of no avail. Meanwhile his influence was 
diminishing, for while his military career had added nothing 
to his prestige, the unpopularity of some of his economic 
and financial doctrines turned many of his fellow-citizens 
against him. For his part he was determined to adhere 
uncompromisingly to sound principles, and to publish his 
views whenever he might think fit. 

Vice-President Stephens was irretrievably alienated from 
the Davis administration by its resort to the conscription 
of troops and by the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus; 
and Governor Brown of Georgia was carried into the opposi- 
tion through controversies over conscription, the officering 
of regiments, and the control of state militia. Both of these 
were chiefly concerned with the championship of state rights. 
Brown was in fact as much disposed toward paternalism 
on the part of the state of Georgia as Davis was on the part 
of the Confederate government. Toombs, on the other 
hand, while directing his most vehement opposition against 
the Davis policies of conscripting troops, impressing sup- 
plies and inflating the currency, warmly censured some of 
Brown's policies either as unsound economically or as in- 
fringements upon individual liberty.* 

* Letter of Toombs to Linton Stephens, Dec. i, 1862. 



THESTRESSOFWAR 247 

A policy which Toombs was almost alone in opposing was 
the restriction of the cotton output, whether by law or by 
neighborhood agreement. He denounced this project as 
part of the tyrannous and irresponsible programme of the 
administration; and as a means of advertising his protest 
he declared on all convenient occasions that he personally 
would plant as much cotton as pleased him, regardless of 
laws and vigilance committees. In June, 1862, when a 
committee in the neighborhood of his plantation demanded 
that he reduce his cotton acreage for the year, he sent his 
defiance in a telegram from Richmond: "You may rob me 
in my absence, but you cannot intimidate me." * 

In spite of their considerable divergence of policies. Brown 
wanted Toombs to succeed him in the governorship. He 
wrote A. H. Stephens, February 16, 1863, saying that if 
Linton Stephens would not consent to be a candidate Toombs 
was his next choice. Of the latter he said: "I have the 
highest confidence in his patriotism, ability and soundness 
upon the vital question of state sovereignty. I should be 
glad to know whether he would consent to be a candidate." 
A month later he wrote again advocating the nomination 
of Toombs, but now expressing apprehension over the cotton 
controversy. He wrote: "I think it a vital matter that 
we look to the production of provisions to the exclusion of 
everything else. I am satisfied our ultimate success depends 
on the bread supply. My opinion is that Genl. Toombs's 
cotton crop of last year will be the hardest thing he has to 
carry. I am sure it would be better for him to excuse that 
on the ground of his absence in the face of the enemy and the 
impertinence of the committee than to justify the policy." 

Toombs declined this overture on the ground that the 
exigencies of war deprived state executives of all important 
functions. He was inclined to stand for election instead to 

* I. W. Avery, History of Georgia, p. 231; Southern Federal Union, June 
17, 1862. 



248 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

the Confederate House or Senate in the fall. Brown eventu- 
ally determined to run for reelection, and was elected by a 
heavy majority for a fourth consecutive term. His candidacy 
was doubtless materially aided by a speech delivered by 
Toombs at Sparta, Ga., June 17, in response to a call from 
the citizens for his views on the state of the country. It was 
inevitable, said he, that men should differ upon policies and 
upon constitutional interpretations. The people should 
weigh the current issues and decide them; the people of the 
South were a unit upon the main object in view, and differed 
only as to means in reaching that end. As to himself, "his 
country was entitled to all that he had and was, and, before 
God, she should have it fully, freely, unreservedly." He 
pronounced the conscription act unconstitutional because 
it did not permit the states to officer their militia as the 
Constitution required. He condemned the Confederate tax 
in kind, saying it would accumulate stores at remote points 
where they would rot for lack of transportation facilities; 
the government ought to purchase supplies at fair market 
rates, and not take corn and pay two dollars a bushel for it 
as it then did when it was bringing three dollars in the market. 
He opposed the state endorsement of Confederate bonds, 
partly for the reason that if Confederate securities should 
decline in value to near zero it would be all-important to 
have state credit preserved as an emergency resource for 
carrying on the war. After turning briefly aside for a glow- 
ing tribute to Southern women he concluded by denouncing 
the resort to martial law. The independence of the South 
he declared worthless unless accompanied by personal 
liberty. "I believe our Constitution to be sufficient for 
peace or war. Preserve it unsullied and unbroken in all 
its purity, and strike not for independence alone, but let 
our motto be independence and liberty 'one and inseparable, 
now and forever.'" * 

* Confederate Union (Milledgeville, Ga.), June 30, 1863. 



THESTRESSOFWAR 249 

Much of the spring and summer was spent by Toombs in 
re-reading the works of Ricardo, Bastiat and such other 
economists as were available, and scrutinizing with increasing 
disapproval the Confederate fiscal policies. As a fruit of 
this he issued, August 12, 1863, a public letter on the finances 
of the Confederacy, which although it has escaped the notice 
of economists is wonderfully in keeping with the soundest 
modern doctrines. His analysis was searching, his criticism 
no less just than merciless, and his recommendations pre- 
sented probably the only plans by which, if by any possibility 
at that time, the Confederacy could have been saved from 
financial collapse. The existing disastrous depreciation of 
the Confederate currency and the demoralization of in- 
dustry and commerce he attributed in cogent phrases to the 
twin policies of conducting a great war without taxation 
and of resorting to credit chiefly in the form of paper money. 
Conditions, he thought, were still within the reach of heroic 
remedies which he prescribed. These were the instant and 
absolute stoppage of treasury notes, the levy of compre- 
hensive and rigid taxation, and the funding of outstanding 
notes into bonds with interest and principal secured by the 
mortgaging of specific and ample portions of the public 
revenue. He concluded: "We must act, and that quickly; 
the public interest and public safety will no longer allow 
delay. Our present system is utterly insupportable; it is 
upsetting the very foundations of private rights, weakening 
daily public confidence in our cause at home and abroad — 
sowing dangerous discontents among the people, which are 
daily deepening and widening. Patriotism demands that 
all good men should unite to correct these evils." * 

These remedies were too drastic for their proposal to 

serve with success as a campaign platform. Yet Toombs's 

sense of public duty impelled him to use it for that purpose. 

When the legislature assembled in November he journeyed 

* National Intelligencer, Aug. 29, 1863. 



250 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

to Milledgeville and announced his candidacy for the Con- 
federate Senate in a speech before the two houses similar 
in strain to his public letter of August. He was supported 
by Brown and Stephens; but Herschel V. Johnson won the 
seat. The determining influence in the contest appears to 
have been exerted by B. H. Hill who was President Davis's 
right-hand man in Georgia. That it was Toombs's policies 
rather than himself that the legislature rejected is indicated 
by the fact that this was the only occasion in his career that 
he was defeated before the people or the legislature of 
Georgia in an avowed candidacy. 

In the following months Toombs of course continued to 
make acid remarks in his private correspondence and con- 
versation upon the perseverance of the Confederate govern- 
ment in its irresponsible legislation; but his chief attention 
was turned to the drastic military necessity of defending 
Georgia's soil from invasion. By midsummer of 1863 the 
disasters of Gettysburg and Vicksburg and the advance of 
the Federal army under Rosecrans into Chattanooga had 
persuaded him that he, along with every other able-bodied 
man, was needed in the army. He wrote Stephens, July 
14, 1863: "I shall try to be with the militia in the prospec- 
tive defense of our homes. ... If we can get up a vol- 
[unteer] regfiment] in this neighborhood I shall take its 
command if desired; and if not I shall take such other posi- 
tion as will enable me to do the most good with one hand.'* 
This plan was carried out in the fall. The Atlanta Con- 
federacy in its issue of October 28 noted that Toombs's 
regiment of militia had been in camp for several weeks in 
the suburbs of Atlanta and was now ready to aid in the 
defense of the state. In January, 1864, he and his force, a 
mixed body of boys and old men known officially as the 
third regiment of the Georgia State Guard, formed part of 
the garrison protecting Savannah. Later when the menace 
from the mountains became greater than that from the sea 



THESTRESSOFWAR 251 

the regiment was transferred to Atlanta and went into the 
trenches to assist General Johnston's forces to defend the 
city against Sherman's army. After the siege had been laid 
for some weeks Davis replaced Johnston with Hood with 
instructions to fight. The consequent battles in the latter 
part of July were defeats for the Confederates, and the siege 
continued. Toward the end of August Sherman extended 
his lines in a flanking movement south and west, threatening 
to block all lines of supply and of egress for Hood's army. 
This forced the evacuation of Atlanta early in September. 
Hood then moved into Tennessee to threaten Sherman's 
communications; but his army was soon destroyed by 
Thomas in the battle of Nashville. The Georgia Guard, on 
the other hand, stayed in front of Sherman as a forlorn obser- 
vation-force to lessen in such slight measure as it could the 
devastation of the country. At the middle of November 
Toombs with part of the Georgia Guard was at Macon, in 
doubt as to the expediency of trying to defend the town. 
Sherman, however, took the Milledgeville route, leaving 
Macon on his right, and proceeded by leisurely marches 
toward Savannah, laying waste the country as he went. 
Toward the end of November Toombs led a brigade of the 
Guard in a route parallel to Sherman's line of march, skirmish- 
ing with his foraging parties from time to time, and reached 
Savannah ahead of Sherman. But finding the defense of 
the city hopeless, the Confederates evacuated it, December 
19, to let it fall a "Christmas present" for Sherman. 

Toombs then went home on sick leave. He recovered 
his health in the spring; but while he was still making caustic 
comments upon the administration and awaiting some new 
opportunity in which he might give aid in the forlorn cause 
of Southern independence, the Confederacy collapsed. 



CHAPTER XI 

AN UNRECONSTRUCTED GEORGIAN 

FOR some obscure reason the village of Washington was 
selected after the evacuation of Richmond as the last 
civil and military headquarters of the expiring Confederate 
government. The town had but a single railroad approach, 
a spur of the Georgia Railroad whose main line lay eighteen 
miles southward; but its difficulty of access by rail may 
have been a recommendation for the purpose at hand. 

Toombs, except for brief trips for consultation and inquiry, 
appears to have staid at home for a month after Lee's sur- 
render, waiting in the common anxiety to learn what policy 
toward the South the United States authorities would adopt. 
His personal frame of mind may better be imagined than 
described. The conditions and events in the town, however, 
have been depicted in the charmingly written diary * of 
Eliza, the sprightly young "rebel" daughter of the leading 
Unionist citizen of the town. Judge Garnett Andrews. The 
diarist recorded under date of April 24: 

"The shattered remains of Lee's army are beginning to 
arrive. There is an endless stream passing between the 
transportation office and the depot, and the trains are going 
and coming at all hours. The soldiers bring all sorts of 
rumors and keep us stirred up in a state of never-ending 
excitement." 

Next day she continued: 

"The square is so crowded with soldiers and government 
wagons that it is not easy to make one's way through it. 

* Eliza F. Andrews, The War-time Journal of a Georgia Girl, N. Y., 1908, 
Chaps. IV, V. (Copyrighted by D. Appleton & Co.) 



AN UNRECONSTRUCTED GEORGIAN 253 

It is especially difficult around the government offices, where 
the poor, ragged, starved and dirty remnants of Lee's heroic 
army are gathered day and night. . . . Little Washington 
is now perhaps the most important military post in our 
poor doomed Confederacy. The naval and medical depart- 
ments have been moved here — what is left of them. Soon 
all this will give place to Yankee barracks, and our dear old 
Confederate gray will be seen no more. The men are all 
talking about going to Mexico and Brazil; if all emigrate 
who say they are going to, we shall have a nation made up 
of women, negroes and Yankees." 

On April 29 she noted the presence of "Judge Crump, . . . 
Assistant Secretary of the Treasury or something of that 
sort, . . . wandering about the country with his barren 
exchequer, trying to protect what is left of it for the pay- 
ment of Confederate soldiers." Mrs. Jefferson Davis 
reached the town on April 30; and on May 3, "about noon 
the town was thrown into the wildest excitement by the 
arrival of President Davis." Among cabinet officials in the 
town, Postmaster-General Reagan was a guest at the Toombs 
residence, and carried to Davis a message from Toombs 
proffering both money and personal services for securing the 
fugitive President's safety in further flight. After receiving 
callers throughout the day of May 4, Davis held a last dismal 
cabinet meeting in the evening and set forth southward that 
night. Next day the first force of Federal troops, "about 
sixty-five white men and fifteen negroes," entered the town 
and went into camp. Several days later the streets were 
placarded with offers of $100,000 reward for the capture 
of Jefferson Davis under a charge of complicity in Booth's 
assassination of Lincoln; and shortly afterward came the 
news that the capture had been made at Irwinville, Georgia. 

Just after the dispersal of the Confederate authorities, 
a bag containing five or six thousand dollars in silver from 
the defunct treasury was found upon the Toombs premises; 
and Toombs promptly delivered it to the commandant of 



254 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

the local Federal garrison.* Whether this episode indicated 
more prudence or probity, fear or scorn on Toombs's part 
the reader may surmise. 

Toombs was left unmolested by the Federal military until 
May II. On that day however, a fresh detachment of 
troops entered the town and proceeded to Toombs's home 
with an order from the Secretary of War for his arrest. But 
Toombs fled from the house as the soldiers were approach- 
ing,! and lay in hiding until a young friend, Charles E. 
Irwin, who had just returned from a lieutenancy in the 
artillery under Longstreet,. got into communication with 
him and arranged a rendezvous at a farm some eighteen 
miles from Washington. He led thither next morning 
Toombs's well-known war-horse, Gray Alice, and served 
as companion and messenger for the fugitive during the 
following weeks. I The two men journeyed into northeastern 
Georgia, where Toombs kept moving about to avoid capture 
while Irwin went on errands to open communications for 
Toombs at his home and at Savannah. On August 5, 1865, 
General J. B. Steedman in command of the Federal troops 
in the district telegraphed from Augusta to the Secretary 
of War: "The wife of Robert Toombs of Georgia desires to 
know whether Mr. Toombs can be paroled if he surrenders 
to the military authorities." Secretary Stanton replied, 
August 11: "Your telegram respecting Robert Toombs has 
been submitted to the President, who directs that if Mr. 
Toombs comes within the reach of the U. S. forces he be 
immediately arrested and sent in close custody to Fort 
Warren." § At Savannah Irwin tried unsuccessfully to 

* Andrews, War-time Journal, p. 245; War of the Rebellion Official Records, 
series I, vol. 49, part 2, p. 955. 

t Andrews, War-time Journal, pp. 241-244. 

% The account of Toombs's experiences as a fugitive is taken mainly 
from Stovall, Toombs, chap. 24. 

§ War of the Rebellion Official Records, series II, vol. 8, pp. 714, 716. 



AN UNRECONSTRUCTED GEORGIAN 255 

make arrangements for Toombs to leave the country through 
that port. He then rejoined Toombs in central Georgia 
and accompanied him on a cautious horseback journey to 
the latter's plantation in Stewart county, and thence by 
rail and steamboat to Mobile and New Orleans, whence 
Toombs sailed, November 4, for Havana. There, at last, 
on foreign soil he was safe from arrest. 

When Andrew Johnson, soon after his accession to the 
presidency, reacted from his first impulse of vindictiveness 
toward the South and adopted a policy of moderation in 
reconstruction, a certain number of Southern public men 
rallied to his support, including Brown of Georgia and Orr 
of South Carolina. Toombs on the other hand was opposed 
to all compromise or cooperation with those whom he deemed 
the enemies of the South. He wrote Stephens from Havana, 
December 15, 1865, expressing his contempt for the sub- 
missionists. "Orr says," said he, "the war has settled this 
constitutional principle and that constitutional principle, 
etc., etc. How does war settle anything except which is 
the strongest party to the pending contest?" As regards 
his own plans, he was resolved to keep out of reach of the 
United States authorities. He wrote: 

"Nobody is strong enough to keep me out of Fort Warren 
except Johnson. All the Supreme Court could not do it if 
they wanted to do so. 'The life of the nation' would be 
adjudged by the commander-in-chief to require incar- 
ceration; and if anything more was deemed needful to the 
'life of the nation,' a military court could hang me much 
more rightfully than it could the poor woman (Mrs. Surratt 
I believe) who was hung in Washington; for I did try to 
take 'the life of the nation,' and sorely regret the failure to 
do it." 

As regards the conditions and problems of the South, he 
deprecated the movement for getting rid of military govern- 
ment, and advocated a policy of complete passiveness. He 
wrote : 



2$e THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

"The true policy of the South is to stand still, do nothing, 
let the Yankees try their hands on Cuffee. If you try to 
help them all failures are yours, not theirs; and one thing, 
my friend, you may rely upon, as long as 'grass grows or 
water flows,' — that is that you can not grow cotton or corn 
in the South except by small planters independent of paid 
labor, without a law for the specific performance of contracts. 
This principle involves the whole law and prophets of 
Southern agriculture. Without that we must abandon the 
application of capital to agriculture except on two hundred 
acre (or less) holdings. That is, we must come to the tenant 
system of Europe. How that will succeed were too long a 
tale for me now." 

Toombs thought for a time of locating in Mexico; but 
he soon gave up that plan. His wife joined him at Havana 
and they sojourned there during the winter and spring. In 
May she returned home, while he proceeded to Europe in 
further prospecting for a home. Mrs. Toombs joined him 
in Paris in July and they spent the following year and a half 
in European exile. Their living expenses were defrayed 
by the sale of part of his great tract of land in Texas. The 
land was wild and the price low; and Toombs was fond of 
saying while abroad that he was eating an acre of dirt a 
day! 

Neither Toombs's spirit nor his resolution to remain in 
exile appear to have flagged until in December, 1866, he 
received a cable despatch telling him of the death of his 
daughter, Mrs. Dudley M. DuBose. Mrs. Toombs at 
once returned home, leaving her husband, like herself, 
bowed down. For the first time he felt the pangs of a 
genuine exile. Grief-stricken and lonely, he felt the weight 
of increasing years and his dependence upon his remaining 
dear ones at home. Within a few weeks he found his exile 
insupportable, and notified his wife that he was about to 
return. "The worst that can happen to me is a prison," 
said he, "and I don't see much to choose between my present 



AN UNRECONSTRUCTED GEORGIAN 257 

position and any decent fort." * Returning to the United 
States in the spring of 1867 he had a satisfactory interview 
with President Johnson, went home, and was never molested 
by the Federal authorities. All of the political prisoners 
but Davis had long since been released, and the country, 
absorbed in the current problems of race relations and party 
politics, had lost interest in punishing the leaders of the 
defeated effort at Southern independence. Toombs never 
applied for amnesty nor took the oath of allegiance; and 
though continuing to be a citizen of Georgia he never regained 
citizenship in the United States, and of course he never 
afterward held office nor voted in national elections. 

But he did not lose his interest nor his influence in public 
affairs. His few terse letters fom his home to Stephens in 
1867, for example, give illuminating glimpses of the pre- 
vailing conditions. On June 14 he wrote: "I see that Brown 
is still speaking, rehashing the same old story as his sole 
capital, to wit that it will be 'worser for us* unless we give 
in quickly, 'and he plays upon a harp of a thousand strings, 
the spirits of just men made perfect.'" Ten days later he 
wrote, "From what I can see, there is likely to be a square- 
cut black and white contest in this country, each color 
gradually falling into line. Events do not look well to me 
here. Crops very good, the country very desponding and 
broken up. They do not understand the new order of things 
financially, and have all lost heavily. Almost all my friends 
are broke." 

In a letter of November 14 he discussed the confiscatory 
character of the congressional tax on cotton : 

"I have been examining and studying for a few days past 
the burthen on the production of cotton in the rebel states, 
and without working out anything new I am perfectly aston- 
ished at my own results. I will throw them into shape as 
soon as I have leisure and present them to our people as a 

* Stovall, Toombs, p. 313. 



258 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

warning against any further efforts to produce it under 
existing laws. To get accu[rate] details I took two farms 
of my brother's, one in Stewart and the other in Wilkes; 
and the result is curious. The 2^ cents tax [i.e. per pound of 
cotton produced] on his Stewart place amounted to jo per cent 
on his whole invest[meni\ in Stewart County!! (say $30,000). 
. . . His Wilkes investment shows equally alarming figures, 
with a very successful year's work. The result is starva- 
tion to the negro, and poverty to the planter if he will plant 
cotton." 

At this time Toombs was making substantial progress 
in rebuilding his law practise. Indeed he soon became per- 
haps the foremost lawyer in the state; and his professional 
earnings together with his profits from wise investments 
made him quite a wealthy man. But in making investments 
he carefully avoided anything which might set a bad example 
to his fellow-citizens; and at the bar he held himself as a 
tribune of the people. He was particularly active in prose- 
cuting claims on behalf of citizens and the state against 
corporations, with a view to restricting their greed, diminish- 
ing their irresponsibility and destroying their tyranny. His 
chief interest in the course of legislation in these post- 
bellum years was to promote the public control of corpora- 
tions and diminish the corporation control of public affairs. 
In the stress of the Reconstruction strife, however, he could 
not keep silent indefinitely upon the issues of federal rela- 
tions and party politics. 

Throughout 1867 and 1868 public interest in Georgia 
was absorbed by an angry debate between the advocates of 
resistance and those of submission to the Reconstruction 
programme of the Republicans who controlled Congress. 
The first impulse of the people had been, of course, to obstruct 
the oppressive Radical plans; and the legislature in a quiet 
session in November, 1866, had rejected the proposed Four- 
teenth Amendment by an almost unanimous vote.* Ex- 
* Federal Union, Nov. 13, 1866. 



AN UNRECONSTRUCTED GEORGIAN 259 

Governor Brown, however, after going to Washington and 
sounding the temper of Congress in February, 1867, issued 
a public letter declaring that the only means of escaping 
yet more radical measures was for the Southern states to 
accept the congressional programme and cooperate in its 
enforcement. His letter was received with a storm of popu- 
lar denunciation, which of course grew still more vehement 
wheA Congress enacted over President Johnson's veto the 
atrocious legislation of March 2 and March 23 destroying 
the reestablished state governments and providing for a 
fresh reconstruction on the base of an extensive disfran- 
chisement of the Southern whites and universal suffrage 
for the negroes. Brown resolutely maintained his position, 
and soon incurred still greater opprobrium by joining the 
Republican party. Nearly all of the other public men in 
the state denounced him, and the people showed him their 
intense disfavor by social ostracism. The leadership of the 
policy of defiance was assumed by Benjamin H. Hill, in a 
speech at Atlanta in July, 1867, and his celebrated "Notes 
on the Situation," published in the newspapers during the 
following months.* Brown replied and a bitter controversy 
between the two men ensued. 

In December, 1867, a "black and tan" constitutional con- 
vention, elected under congressional authority in October, 
met in Atlanta to revise the state constitution. The state 
treasurer, supported by Governor Jenkins, refused to pay 
the drafts to meet the expenses of this convention, and 
General Meade, commandant of the military district includ- 
ing Georgia, removed the governor and treasurer from office 
and detailed two United States army officers for service as 
governor and treasurer of the state of Georgia. Shortly 
afterward a general election was ordered to be held in May 
for the choice of a governor and a legislature and for the rati- 

* Reprinted in B. H. Hill, Jr., Life, Speeches and Writings of B. H. Hill, 
pp. 730-811. 



26o THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

fication or rejection of the newly-framed state constitution. 
The campaign brought forth violence by the Ku Klux Klan 
on the one hand and the Loyal League, supported by the 
Federal army, on the other. Intimidation and fraud were 
so rife that the outcome at the polls was highly confused. 
The military authorities had control of the election machinery, 
however, and declared the ratification of the new constitu- 
tion and the election of Rufus B. Bullock, the Republican 
candidate, over John B. Gordon as governor for a term of 
four years, and the election of a Republican majority in the 
legislature. But the exhibition of Democratic strength at 
the polls was strong enough to stimulate a great rally of the 
party. 

Additional stimulus was given when the National Demo- 
cratic convention which met at New York, July 4, resolved, 
"We regard the Reconstruction Acts . . . of Congress . . . 
as usurpations and unconstitutional, revolutionary and void." 
In Georgia a Democratic convention was promptly called 
to meet at Atlanta, July 23, to ratify the national platform 
and nominate a ticket of Seymour and Blair electors; and 
this occasion was seized for holding a great popular mass- 
meeting. A huge "bush arbor" was built near the railroad 
station in Atlanta, and excursion trains brought thousands 
from every direction to hear the celebrated speakers who 
were announced in the programme. 

Toombs in the initial speech at the bush-arbor meeting 
made virtually his first public utterance since the collapse 
of the Confederacy.* This speech dealt in few personalities, 
had few local allusions, and no touches of humor or even of 
sarcasm. It was merely a vigorous but relatively unim- 
passioned analysis of the existing situation, a condemnation 
of the Republican programme of Reconstruction and an 

* Great speech of Gen. Robert Toombs, delivered in Atlanta, Ga., July 23^ 
1868, specially reported by the "Chronicle and Sentinel," Augusta, Ga., 1868. 
8 pp. 



AN UNRECONSTRUCTED GEORGIAN 261 

appeal for loyal Georgians to rally to the support of the 
Democratic party. The speaker was not himself optimistic, 
and he did not increase the hopefulness of his audience. He 
was grave and resolute, and he succeeded in his purpose of 
increasing the gravity and resolution of his hearers. 

Toombs was followed on the bush-arbor platform by 
Howell Cobb and B. H. Hill, whose speeches mingled humor- 
ous and telling criticisms of the anti-Democratic policies 
with perfervid and indiscreet appeals for a rally in behalf of 
Southern rights. Cobb for example said in one of the 
climaxes of his speech, which on the whole was one of the 
most eloquent in the history of American oratory: "My 
friends, they [the Republican party] are our enemies. . . . 
Enemies they were in war, enemies they continue to be in 
peace. In war we drew the sword and bade them defiance; 
in peace we gather up the manhood of the South, and raising 
the banner of constitutional liberty, and gathering around 
it the good men of the North as well as the South, we hurl 
into their teeth the same defiance, and bid them come on 
to the struggle," The chief effect of such expressions was 
to give campaign material to the Republican agitators, a 
principal source of whose strength with Northern voters 
lay in their assertions of the rebellious disposition of the 
South. 

In Georgia when the great bush-arbor meeting dispersed 
the people took home with them the teaching of their political 
preachers and prophets, and worked and waited for the 
better times to come. The waiting, however, was weary, 
for the state was destined yet to undergo the deepest travail 
before the recapture of her government by the Democrats. 

The Democratic ticket, it is true, carried the state in the 
presidential election of 1868; but Grant was elected by a 
huge majority in the country at large and gave the support 
of the administration and the army to the Radical govern- 
ment in Georgia. Prompted and abetted by Foster Blodg- 



262 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

ett, H. I. Kimball and their crew of plunderers, the Bullock 
administration instituted a carnival of public spoliation. 
After rendering the legislature subservient by using the 
military to purge it of its more honest members, they pro- 
ceeded by issuing state bonds in subsidy of railroad cor- 
porations controlled by the gang, and by numerous other 
devices, to pour public money into their own private 
purses. 

Toombs of course denounced this plundering with all his 
vehemence on every occasion, declaring the issue of securities 
to be invalid and pledging himself to work for the annul- 
ment of the bonds and all similar achievements of the Radi- 
cals until success should crown his efforts. He said on more 
than one occasion: "We will adopt a new constitution with 
a clause repudiating these bonds, and like ^tna spew the 
monstrous frauds out of the market." 

In a public lecture entitled "Magna Carta" which he 
delivered in many towns of the state, as well as in speeches 
at county fairs and in arguments before courts and juries, 
he reiterated his censures and his pledges. He also denounced 
the enactment by the Radicals of laws to exempt homesteads 
from seizure for debt and to exempt certain corporations 
from taxation. The homestead laws, said he while arguing 
a case before the state supreme court, put a premium on 
dishonesty and robbed poor men of their capital. In reply 
to a question from the bench as to the intention of the legis- 
lature in enacting the legislation he said, "Yes, may it 
please the court, there can be no doubt that it was the 
intention of the legislature to defraud the creditor; but they 
have failed to put their intention in a form that would stand, 
so it becomes necessary for this court to add its own ingenuity 
to this villainy. It seems that this court is making laws 
rather than decisions." The court decided against him in 
spite of a vehement dissent by Judge Hiram Warner; but 
the decision was overruled in Toombs's favor by the United 



AN UNRECONSTRUCTED GEORGIAN 263 

States Supreme Court.* Toombs was so caustic in criticis- 
ing Bullock and his legislature that the court made a rule 
that no attorney while conducting a case should abuse a 
coordinate branch of the state government, and warned 
Toombs against incurring the penalties of contempt. Toombs 
observed the rule until Bullock's resignation and flight, 
noted below. Shortly thereafter in an argument before the 
court Toombs took occasion to allude to Bullock in censorious 
terms and to twit the court: "May it please your honors, 
the Governor has now absconded. Your honors have put 
in a little rule to catch me. In seeking to protect the powers 
that be, I presume you did not intend to defend the powers 
that were." f In regard to tax-exemption of corporations 
he said: "You may by your deep-laid schemes lull the 
thoughtless, enlist the selfish, and stifle for a while the voices 
of patriots, but the day of reckoning will come. These 
cormorant corporations, these so-called patriotic developers, 
whom you seek to exempt, shall pay their dues, if justice 
lives. By the Living God, they shall pay them." J In 
after years he devoted himself as an attorney for the state 
to the collection of these arrears of taxation from the rail- 
roads, with ultimate success. 

Ex-Governor Brown, whom Bullock had appointed chief- 
justice, and numerous others who had entered the Republican 
party with honest motives, were turned against Bullock and 
his gang by their misdeeds; and in 1870 a strong Democratic 
majority was elected to the legislature. Confronted with 
the prospect of impeachment, Bullock resigned the govern- 
orship in October 1871 and fled to New York. Toombs 
promptly had him indicted on a charge of embezzlement. 
Bullock escaped arrest for several years, but was finally 
tried and acquitted by a Georgia jury. 

In 1870 there began a series of surprising readjustments 

* Stovall, Toombs, pp. 317, 318. 

t Ibid., pp. 320, 321. X Ibid., p. 319. 



264 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

in the relations of the established political leaders in Georgia. 
Toombs wrote Stephens, January 24, 1870, after a visit to 
Atlanta, which had recently been made the capital of the 
state: "I went to Atlanta to see if I could be of any service 
in the present 'coup d'6tat' of Bullock and his conspirators. 
. . . Bryant is the candidate of the Democrats for speaker 
of the house, and I and Joe Brown are trying to elect him! 
Rather a strange conjunction is it not? But you know my 
rule is to use the devil if I can do better to save the country." 
After another trip on the same errand he wrote further, 
February 8: "Brown seems really in earnest in his endeav- 
our to defeat Bullock and his schemes. I don't [know] 
whether or not he sees where his present course will land 
him, but I suppose he does. There were many curious 
developments which I don't care to put on paper but will 
tell you all about when we meet. We thought we had the 
crowd pretty dead two or three times, but the spirit of evil 
at Washington was too strong for us, and poor Grant 
could not 'stick.'" By the end of the year Brown seems 
to have returned to full Democratic fellowship, though for 
some years thereafter Toombs, who considered himself the 
official censor of political morals, continued to view him with 
suspicion. 

In the following autumn a vigorous campaign was made 
by the Democrats for the election of congressmen in October 
and a legislature in December. Both efforts were successful. 
But on the eve of the legislative election Benjamin H. Hill 
seems to have fallen into a panic at the fancied prospect of 
impending strife. He issued, December 8, an address to 
the people of Georgia, recanting many of his recent views and 
recommending that the Reconstruction amendments be 
accepted as accomplished facts, that the negroes be pro- 
tected in the exercise of the suffrage, and that citizens 
disregard party lines and apply no test but that of honesty 
in choosing between candidates. Hill of course promptly 



AN UNRECONSTRUCTED GEORGIAN 265 

fell heir to all the obloquy with which Brown had been loaded 
and from which the latter was now emerging. 

At the end of the year the most salient public question 
was the lease of the Western and Atlantic railroad. This 
road had been built by the state of Georgia and thus far 
had been publicly operated.* During Brown's ante-bellum 
governorship the road had yielded handsome net revenues, 
but under the Radical rule it had been a constant drain upon 
the state treasury. Yet the track had been allowed to fall 
into such bad condition that in 1870 officials of connecting 
lines began to protest that it was too dangerous to run their 
cars upon. When the legislature met in October, Blodgett, 
the thieving superintendent, demanded an appropriation 
of $500,000 for repairs, and proposed as an alternative that 
the state should lease the road to some of its citizens. A bill 
to lease the road for twenty years was promptly introduced, 
and was supported by numerous capitalists and politicians 
who formed themselves into two rival companies to bid for 
the lease. When the bill was passed and bids were invited, 
one of the companies bid $34,500 per month but was denied 
the lease on the ground that the security which it offered was 
not adequate. The other company, organized by Joseph E. 
Brown who had resigned his judicial office, included Benjamin 
H. Hill, Alexander H. Stephens and other men of various 
types in political life, together with a group of railroad presi- 
dents; and the bid of $25,000 per month by this company 
was accepted by the governor. Toombs at once wrote 
Stephens, December 30, 1870: "I was surprised to see your 
name in the state lease. Is there anything in it.? I hope 
and believe not, of course, unless you have been misled in 
the business. It is a lot of the greatest rogues on the conti- 
nent, your name alone excepted." Stephens replied immedi- 
ately saying he had applied for permission to participate in 

* U. B. Phillips, History of Transportation in the Eastern Cotton Belt, 
Chap. 7. 



266 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

the project because he thought it would be advantageous 
both to the state and to the stockholders. Toombs replied 
the same night exculpating Stephens from blame but censur- 
ing the project. A few days afterward Stephens publicly 
announced his repudiation of the enterprise and transferred 
his one ninety-second part of the capital stock of the cor- 
poration to the state of Georgia. An unfortunate aftermath 
to this episode was a misunderstanding between Stephens 
and Toombs in the spring of 1874, over legal proceedings 
in regard to the share which the former had held in the 
Western and Atlantic company. Stephens petulantly took 
offense at a fancied imputation, and rushed into print to 
defend himself and censure Toombs; but Toombs patiently 
explained the matter to Stephens's satisfaction, and the 
two were again inseparable. Stephens was probably the 
only person, outside his family, with whom Toombs was ever 
patient. 

With the election of a Democratic legislature, the with- 
drawal of Federal troops, and the flight of Bullock, the 
Radical regime in Georgia collapsed. In December, 1871, 
James M. Smith, the Democratic candidate, was elected 
Governor without opposition, and next month was inaugu- 
rated amid tremendous rejoicing. Both Toombs and Brown 
were among the dignitaries who lent their presence to the 
occasion; but these twain were destined to have another 
sharp quarrel before amity was restored. This altercation 
arose in July, 1872, when a private letter of Toombs's was 
printed which insinuated that Brown had helped to lobby 
a certain bill through the legislature, which defrauded the 
state of a sum of money. Brown replied in a public letter 
giving the lie to the insinuation. Toombs then sent him 
an inquiry asking whether he would accept a challenge, and 
Brown adroitly replied that that question would be answered 
when the challenge was received. Whereupon Toombs 
appears to have bethought him that duelling was not a fit 



AN UNRECONSTRUCTED GEORGIAN 267 

recourse for graybeards, and he resumed his pen for the 
public press instead of demanding the use of pistols. The 
episode aided Brown in recovering public good will, some- 
what at Toombs's expense. 

By 1872 the Radical outrages in the Southern states, 
together with the venality of the Grant administration, 
became nauseous to many Northern Republicans, and a 
considerable element of them, calling themselves Liberals, 
bolted the party. The Democrats rejoiced at this; and 
most of them favored a merging of their party with the 
Republican malcontents. Toombs was however, as usual 
in this later portion of his career, uncompromising; and 
Stephens stood with him. Their opposition to the proposed 
"new departure" was intensified when the Liberal Republi- 
can movement miscarried in the nomination of the senile 
and unfit Horace Greeley. The prevailing sentiment among 
Georgia Democrats, however, was to grasp at victory on 
any terms. When the state convention met at Atlanta, 
June 26, Toombs fought the Greeley plan and procured the 
adoption of resolutions that the Georgia delegates to Balti- 
more should go uninstructed. But the Greeley men were 
strong enough to control the choice of delegates. "As the 
names were read out, Gen. Toombs was heard to exclaim 
audibly, 'Packed, by God.'" * When Greeley was nomi- 
nated at Baltimore, Toombs, Stephens and their following 
refused to support him, and nominated a "straight Demo- 
cratic" ticket for Charles O'Connor as President. At the 
polls in Georgia 75,896 votes were cast for Greeley, 62,485 
for Grant and 3999 for O'Connor. 

Through these years Toombs kept in sleepless memory his 
resolution to give Georgia a new and sounder constitution, 
but he still had to bide his time until affairs in both state 
and nation were ripe. Of affairs in Georgia he wrote Ste- 
phens, January 21, 1872: "The legislature is feeble, raw, 
* Avery, History of Georgia, p. 502. 



268 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

irresolute and easily led away." Of national politics he 
wrote, November 6, 1874, when somewhat cheered by the 
congressional election: "Nothing can arrest the onward 
tide in favor of the Democrats but their own folly, and I am 
afraid they will supply a plenty of that." 

In 1876 Toombs vigorously disapproved the Democratic 
nomination of Tilden, particularly after the publication of 
the latter's weak letter of acceptance. Toombs wrote 
Stephens, October 30: "I never hoped for anything from an 
old Van Buren Free-soiler trained in Tammany Hall and 
Wall Street. . . . The mongrel crew who call themselves 
Democrats . . . want Tilden elected for the same reason 
that FalstafF rejoiced at Prince Hal's reconciliation with 
the old King — 'Hal, rob me the exchecquer.'" 

The disputes which arose from the results at the polls 
in November of course made Toombs apprehensive of con- 
tinued tyranny at the hands of the Republicans, and he 
exhorted the Democrats to die in the last ditch rather than 
submit to an autocratic settlement of the issue. But the 
final outcome by which the inauguration of Hayes was per- 
mitted in exchange for a pledge that he would put a stop 
to all federal interference in Southern affairs was highly 
satisfactory to this unflagging champion of Southern rights. 
He wrote Stephens, April 24, 1877: 

" I have been so busy with my personal and professional 
affairs for the last three months that I have scarcely had 
time to keep the run of public events. They seem to me to 
be in a curious condition. It may result in throwing over- 
board the worst materials of the Radical party, and I am 
quite sure that nothing worse or even so bad can follow. 
The fraudulent coalition calling itself the Democratic party 
of the South and the North as well, are horrified at the 
Southern policy of Hayes. They fear it may 'split the 
party.' So much the better if it does. It certainly needs 
sifting and cleansing. As to the Northern Democrats 
[they] seem ardently to desire bad government at the South, 



AN UNRECONSTRUCTED GEORGIAN 269 

that they may make capital for themselves at home. They 
do not want redress, but grievances to complain of. While 
that may be fun for the children it is death to the frogs. I 
hope Hayes will put honest men in office at the South and 
care not a copper for their politics." 

For the two years preceding 1877 Toombs had urged the 
people in speeches delivered throughout the state to repu- 
diate the fraudulent bonds issued by the Bullock govern- 
ment and to order a thorough revision of the constitution. 
Early in 1877 the repudiation was accomplished by consti- 
tutional amendment, and the question of calling a constitu- 
tional convention was submitted by the legislature to the 
people. Toombs announced himself as a candidate for 
election to the convention from his district, and in a public 
letter of April 26 urged the people to vote in favor of calling 
the convention and presented his views of the features needed 
in the contemplated new frame of government. These 
included a reduction of the executive patronage, an increased 
efficiency of the judiciary system, a shortening of the four- 
year senatorial term, a more equitable distribution of sena- 
torial representation, the prevention of future abuses of 
public credit, the public control of corporations, and the 
improvement of the homestead exemption law. He of 
course denounced the source and character of the existing 
constitution, and he scouted such few arguments as he could 
find against the framing of a new one.* The referendum 
in June resulted favorably, and the convention assembled 
in Atlanta, July 11, 1877, with a large number of the state's 
ablest men, including Toombs, among its 194 members. 

The convention was promptly organized with Ex-Governor 
Charles J. Jenkins as president, and speedily set to work.f 

* Union and Recorder (Milledgeville, Ga.), May 8, 1877. 

t A Stenographic Report of the Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention 
held in Atlanta, Georgia, 1877. Reported by Samuel W. Small, Atlanta, 
1877. 



270 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

On the second day it provided for the appointment of thir- 
teen standing committees of nine members each, to report 
proposals upon the thirteen subjects assigned them, and a 
fourteenth committee "on the order, consistency and har- 
mony of the whole constitution ... to consist of two mem- 
bers of each of the said thirteen standing committees, to 
which final committee of revision the said thirteen com- 
mittees shall make their reports." Toombs was appointed 
chairman of the committee on the legislative department 
and chairman of this committee on revision. 

By virtue of the latter appointment, as well as by virtue 
of his personal earnestness, sound judgment and vigor, he 
dominated the convention. He spurred the several com- 
mittees to their work, and within a week began to present 
frequent reports from the committee on final revision. On 
the floor of the convention he steered the proceedings, 
laboring always not only to procure the adoption of sound 
provisions but also to promote the utmost expedition of 
business in order to prevent the halting of its work by the 
exhaustion of the meager ^25,000 which the legislature had 
provided for the convention's expenses. When in spite of 
his prodding the convention exhausted its appropriation 
before completing the new constitution, Toombs offered to 
advance to the state from his own purse as much money as 
might be needed to enable the convention to conclude its 
task. The proffer was gratefully accepted. The $20,000 
which he advanced was afterward repaid him by the state. 

Because of his powerful influence in committee proceed- 
ings, Toombs had few occasions to make elaborate speeches 
in the convention. Except where a few measures to which 
he was especially devoted were concerned, his typical partici- 
pation in the debates on the floor is illustrated by his 
remarks in the proceedings of the eleventh day, when a pro- 
posed amendment permitting the imprisonment of debtors 
was under discussion : " If we ever expect to come to any con- 



AN UNRECONSTRUCTED GEORGIAN 271 

elusion of our labors we cannot be making [a] collection of 
laws here. All this convention has to do is to establish a 
few fundamental principles and leave these other matters 
to the legislature and the people, in order to meet the ever 
varying affairs of human life. I move to lay the whole of 
the amendment on the table." The motion to lay on the 
table prevailed.* 

His only speeches of more than two or three minutes in 
length were devoted to the reform of the judiciary and the 
legislature and to provisions for securing the taxation and 
regulation of corporations. He advocated the increase of 
the number of judges of the supreme court from three to five, 
on the ground that "in a multitude of counsels there is 
wisdom"; but in this proposal he was defeated. In urging 
the election of judges by the general assembly rather than 
by the people, he was more successful- His argument here 
was partly upon general principles and partly upon the need 
of diminishing the prospective evils of negro suffrage, f In 
the provisions regarding the legislature, his chief interest lay 
in making representation proportional to population. J But 
in the previous constitutions of the state the rural counties 
had enjoyed an undue proportion of representation at the 
expense of the cities; and their delegates, clinging to this 
advantage, were able to defeat the reform. The senatorial 
term of office, however, was reduced from four to two years. 

Toombs's principal speeches in the convention were 
devoted to the subject of corporations. He maintained in 
phrases unusual in that generation but common in the next, 
that artificial monopolies should be prohibited, that natural 
monopolies should be publicly regulated, and that all cor- 
porations should be required to pay their full share of taxa- 
tion.! In his advocacy of the regulation of railroad rates 

* Proceedings, p. 87. J Ibid., pp. 343, 344, 359. 

t Ibid., pp. 215, 223, 225. 

§ Ibid., pp. 95, 10S-107, 298, 299, 3 IS, 384, 394, 404-410, 466, 467. 



272 THE LIFE OF ROBERT TOOMBS 

he easily worsted such powerful opponents as Ex-Governor 
Brown and General A. R. Lawton, and he also carried his 
proposals to prohibit the grant of irrevocable franchises and 
immunities, to prohibit the granting of state aid to rail- 
roads and the purchase of railroad stock by the state, and to 
prohibit the interlocking of railroad securities in such way 
as would lessen competition. Incidentally Toombs carried 
through his project for reforming the provision for exempt- 
ing homesteads from debt. The convention completed its 
work in thirty-nine days and adjourned on August 25. The 
new constitution was then submitted to popular ratification 
and was adopted by a vote of 110,442 to 40,947. It was 
well known that Toombs had been the hero of the conven- 
tion, and the state rang again with his acclaim. 

With the gift of this admirable new constitution to Georgia 
Toombs's public course was run, except for his lending a 
hand in framing the railroad-commission bill of 1879, which 
gave effect to the constitutional mandate. He still con- 
tinued his championship of the state and the people against 
the corporations in the courts, and continued to express 
forcible opinions upon public men and measures; but these 
remaining years were distinctly a period of decline. His 
eyesight was being destroyed by cataracts, his health was 
usually poor, and he was depressed by the sufferings of his 
adored wife from a malady of the brain. He became more 
addicted to the use of liquors, more careless of his dress, his 
law cases and his investments. He grew pessimistic regard- 
ing state and national politics, and more caustic in his com- 
ments upon public men. Yet in the saddest of these years 
Toombs was an inspiration to the best type of oncoming 
young Georgians, Henry Grady for example, who made 
allowances for his pathetic failings, loved him for his still 
rugged virtues, and treasured the flashes of wit and wisdom 
which he still gave forth in his conversation. 

In March, 1883, Toombs made one of his last public 



AN UNRECONSTRUCTED GEORGIAN 273 

appearances at the bier of Stephens, when with bent frame, 
streaming eyes and choking voice he tried to express his 
love and admiration for his now departed lifelong friend. 
In the following autumn he was still more broken by the 
death of his wife. But his old-man's gloom at the political 
decadence of the times was joyously ended a year before 
his death by the election to the presidency not only of a 
Democrat but of a sterling advocate of tariff and pension 
reform, sound money and a general conservative, construc- 
tive policy, in the person of Grover Cleveland. Toombs 
now for the first time expressed regret that he had not taken 
the oath of allegiance and resumed a public career.* 

At the end of September, 1885, Toombs took his bed in 
his last illness. In his delirium he would talk of men and 
affairs of other times, but in lucid intervals he was alert for 
current news and laconic as usual in his comments. At one 
time he was told the Georgia legislature, for which he then 
had not much esteem, was still in session. "Lord, send for 
Cromwell," said he. 

Bishop George F. Pierce of the Southern Methodist church 
had been the intimate friend of Toombs ever since their 
college days together, and many had been the passages-at- 
arms between them. Tradition has it that at one time while 
Toombs was yet a Whig he made reply to an overture by 
Pierce on behalf of the church: "George, you and I are both 
doing the Lord's work; you are fighting the devil and I am 
fighting the Democrats." But in his old age he ceased 
bantering on religion, accepted the simple faith of his wife, 
and became a member of the Methodist church. 

Toombs died at his home, on December 15, 1885, and was 
buried in the quiet little Washington cemetery. The plain 
shaft over his grave is inscribed merely "Robert Toombs"; 
but to Georgians that inscription is eloquent. 
* Stovall, Toombs, p. 370. 



INDEX 



Abolition agitation, resolutions of 
the "radical political abolition- 
ists" (1855), 50, 51; texts from 
the Liberator^ 51, 52; Toombs's 
views of the agitation, 76, 78, 
155-166, 179-183; 185-187, 202- 
202 

Adams, John Quincy, 28, 34, 35 

Andrews, Eliza F., War-time Jour- 
nal of a Georgia Girl, quoted, 
252, 253 

Archer, William B., 35 

Baldwin, Abraham, 8 
Beauregard, P. G. T., 235, 245 
Bell, John, 116, 190, 192, 193 
Benjamin, Judah P., 116, 138, 146, 

205 
Benning, Henry L., 53 
Benton, Thomas H., 54, 116 
Berrien, John M., 9, 32, 35, 105, 

116 
Black, Edward J., 30-32 
Blodgett, Foster, 261 
Botts, John M., 54 
Boyd, Linn 60, 71, 74, 85, 86 
Breckinridge, John C., 188, 192, 

193, 206 
Brown, Joseph E., on Southern 
rights (1850), 91, 92; elected 
governor of Georgia, 171; re- 
elected, 176, 177; opposes Howell 
Cobb, 189; secession policy, 
196, 198; orders capture of Fort 
Pulaski, 216; war-time admin- 
istration, 246-248; policy in 
reconstruction, 255, 256; chief- 
justice of Georgia, 263; organizes 
the Western and Atlantic R. R. 
Co., 265; quarrel with Toombs, 
266, 267 
Brownlow, William G., 54 
Buchanan, James, 60, i88; elected 



President, 170; opposes Douglas 
and squatter sovereignty, 173; 
denies validity of secession, 215 
Bullock, Rufus B., 250-266 

Calhoun, John C, 29, 30, 118; 
author of Southern address (1849), 
50; on Mexican war, 52; project for 
a Southern phalanx in Congress, 
59-62, 78; lets his mantle fall 
upon Toombs, 79; death, 79 
California, acquisition of, 41, 46, 
52; question of slavery in, 42, 
43, 55, 64, 68-70, 81, 85, 86, 98 
Cass, Lewis, 48, 60, 116, 135 
Chase, Salmon P., 116, 118 
Clarke, John, 8 
Clarke party in Georgia, 8, 18 
Clay, Henry, 28-33, 58, 73, 79 
Clayton, Augustin S., 9, 14 
Clayton, John M., 56, 57 
Clingman, Thomas L., 54, 73 
Cobb, Howell, 34, 41, 52, 54, 60, 
74, 93, 107, 168, 190, 221, 224, 
225, 242; elected speaker, 66-73; 
campaigns for the endorsement of 
the compromise of 1850, 95-98; 
aids in organizing the Constitu- 
tional Union party, 99, 100; 
elected governor of Georgia, 
103, 104; proposed for presi- 
dency of U. S., 188, 189; elected 
president of the Confederate 
Provisional Congress, 222; in 
military service, 243; bush- 
arbor speech (1868), 261 
Cobb, Thomas R. R., 199, 214, 

220, 221, 223, 224, 228, 242 
Colcock, William F., 70, 80 
Colquitt, Walter T., 30-32 
Compromise of 1850, 73-88 
Cone, Francis T., 16, 59 
Confederate States of America, 



276 



INDEX 



Montgomery convention (Pro- 
visional Congress), 222-230; elec- 
tion of President, 223-227; fram- 
ing of Permanent Constitution, 
228-230; diplomatic missions, 
230; military preparations, 232, 
233; the attack on Fort Sumter, 
233-236; military operations in 
Virginia, 236-239, 242, 245; finan- 
cial policies censured by Toombs, 
239, 248-250; military opera- 
tions in Georgia, 250, 251; col- 
lapse of the government, 251- 
253 

Congress (U. S.)> Toombs elected 
to, 24; new Southern members, 
1843-1845), 34, 35; Calhoun's 
effort to establish a Southern 
block, 59-62; speakership contest 
(1849), 66-73 

Constitutional Union party, of 
1850-1852, 99, 100, 103-110; of 
i860, 176, 190 

Cooper, Mark A., 30-32 

Crawford, George W., 65, 141, 142, 
219, 224, 225, 230 

Crawford, William H., 8, 9, 15, 21, 

Crittenden, John J., 54, 58, 60, 138, 
211; compromise resolutions 206- 
208 

Daniell, W. C, 59 

Davis, JefFerson, 54, 55, 93, 116, 
170, 188, 205; enters Congress, 
35; defeated for governorship of 
Mississippi, 105; denounces 
squatter sovereignty, 172; res- 
olutions on slavery in the terri- 
tories, 184; member of the Sen- 
ate committee of thirteen, 206, 
207; elected President of the 
Confederate States, 226, 227; 
administration, 229-253; cap- 
ture, 253 

Democratic party, in Georgia in 
Jacksonian period, 18; tendency 
toward irresponsibility in finance, 
20-22; and to social radicalism, 
26; its clientele in the South, 27; 
joined by Calhoun and his fol- 
lowing, 29-31; new Congress- 
men, Yancey, Cobb, Johnson, 



Davis, 34; Oregon policy, 37, 
38; Mexican policy, 39; Southern 
rights movement, 59-62; speaker- 
ship contest of 1849, 66-73; "ft 
among Georgia Democrats over 
the endorsement of the com- 
promise of 1850, 95, 103, 104; 
contest of Georgia factions for 
Democratic "regularity," 106- 
iio; election of Pierce, no; 
Toombs and Stephens join the 
party, 168, 169; election of 
Buchanan, 170; rift over squat- 
ter sovereignty, 170-173, 184; 
Charleston convention, 188-190; 
Baltimore convention, 190-192; 
Richmond convention, 192; cam- 
paign of 1868, 260, 261; recap- 
tures control in Georgia, 266; 
nomination of Greeley repudiated 
by Toombs, 267; Toombs's opin- 
ion of the party in 1877, 268, 269; 
election of Cleveland, 273 

District of Columbia, questions of 
slavery and the slave-trade in, 
54, 61, 69, 88, 98 

Dixon, Archibald, 117 

Doolittle, William H., 143, 144, 
206, 208 

Doty, James D., 73-75, 80, 82, 

85 

Douglas, Stephen A., 55, 116, 179, 
206, 211; enters Congress, 35; 
promotes adjustment of New 
Mexico and California ques- 
tions, 75; introduces the Kansas- 
Nebraska bill, 116-118; advo- 
cates squatter sovereignty in 
Kansas, 170, 172; opposed by 
Davis and Buchanan, 172, 173; 
Toombs's attitude toward, 176, 
177; presidential candidacy in 
the Charleston and Baltimore 
conventions, 188-193 

Dred Scott case, I2I, 130, 172, 188 

Federalist party, 26 

Fessenden, William P., 127, 128, 

.'52 
Fillmore, Millard, accession to the 
presidency, 85; influence in favor 
of the compromise of 1850, 89; 
Know-nothing candidate, 170 



INDEX 



277 



Foote, Henry S., 54, 105, 106 
Fowler, W. C, The Sectional Con- 
troversy, quoted, 195 

Galphin claim, 22, 84, 138-144 
Georgia, description of the pied- 
mont area, 3, 4; industry and 
society, 6, 7; political leaders in 
the early nineteenth century, 
8-10; university of, 1 1-14; polit- 
ical issues (1837-1844), 18-24; 
convention of 1850, 91, 96-^9; 
county resolutions on secession, 
211-214; convention of 1861, 214, 
219-221, 233; ordinance of seces- 
sion adopted, 220; military opera- 
tions in, 250, 251; constitutional 
convention of 1877, 269-272 
Georgia Platform, 96-99, 167, 169, 

Giddings, Joshua R., 35, 71 
Gordon, John B., 260 
Grady, Henry, 272 
Greeley, Horace, 58, 267 

Hale, John P., 55, 124, 145 

Harrison, William Henry, 31-33 

Harlan, James, contested senato- 
rial election, 148, 152 

Hayes, Rutherford B., 268, 269 

Helper, Hinton R., 54, 182 

Hill, Benjamin H., 171, 176, 240, 
250, 259, 261, 264, 265 

Hill, D. H., 244 

Hilliard, Henry W., 89, 90, loj 

Holden, William W., 54 

Holmes, Isaac E., 59 

Holsey, Hopkins, 91 

Hull, William Hope, 107 

Hunter, Robert M. T., 30, 35, 54, 
93, 188, 206, 237 

Iverson, Alfred, 174, 175, 205, 241. 

Jackson, Andrew, 18, 26, 29 
Jackson, James, 8, 9 
JefFersonian Democracy, 25 
Jenkins, Charles J., no, 167, 259, 

269 
Johnson, Andrew, 34, 67, 71, 80, 

2SS, 2S7, 259 
Johnson, Herschel V., 167, 190, 219, 

220, 250 



Johnston, Joseph E., 238, 239, 252 

Kansas-Nebraska act, 1 17-122, 168, 
169 

Kansas, colonization of, 122, 123; 
disorders in, 123; the Toombs 
bill for the admission of, 124- 
128; Lecompton constitution, 
128-130; squatter sovereignty 
issue, 170 

King, Preston, 35 

Know-nothing party, 168, 170, 171, 
17s, 176 

Lee, Robert E., 239, 244 
Liberator, the, texts from, 51, 52 
Liberty party, platform (1855), 

.50, 51 
Lincoln, Abraham, debates with 
Douglas, 172; elected President, 
192, 193, 197; blockade procla- 
mation, 236; Davis charged with 
complicity in assassination of, 

Longstreet, James B., 238, 245 
Lumpkin, John H., 39, 60, 95 
Lumpkin, Joseph Henry, 16, 95 

McClellan, George B., 238, 239, 
242-244 

McClernand, John A., 74, 75, 79, 
80 

McDonald, Charles J., 95, 98, 103 

McDuffie, George, 32 

Mason, James M., 116, 145 

Memminger, C. G., 224 

Mexican war, 35, 39-41, $2 

Missouri compromise, 81 

Missourians, activities of, in Kan- 
sas, 123 

Nashville convention (1850), 94, 
98, 197 

Naval retiring board, action cen- 
sured by Toombs, 145-148 

New Mexico, acquisition of, 41, 46, 
52; question of slavery in, 42, 43, 
55, 64, 68-70, 81, 85, 86, 98 

Nisbet, Eugenius A., 100, 219, 220, 
221 

Nullification issue, in Georgia, 9, 18 

Oregon, Toombs's speech on, 36, 37 



(J 



278 



INDEX 



Pierce, Franklin, elected President, 
109, no 

Planters, political problems and 
policies of, 25, 28, 51-54; finan- 
cial distress of, 33 

Polk, James K., 36, 37, 39, 40, 61 

Preston, William B., bill for Cali- 
fornia statehood, 62, 63, 83, 84 

Pryor, Roger A., 233, 235 

Quitman, John A., 53, 54, lOl 

Reed, John C, estimate of Toombs 
as a lawyer, 16, 17; describes 
Toombs's speech at Lexington, 
Ga., 104; interprets Toombs's 
course on the Kansas-Nebraska 
bill, 120; characterizes Toombs's 
non-sectional activities in the 
Senate, 150-154 

Republican party, beginnings, 168; 
Fremont's candidacy, 169, 170; 
increase of strength, 172, 174, 
175; Toombs's charges against, 
180-182, 185, 186; speakership 
election (i860), 181-183; nom- 
ination and election of Lincoln 
as President, 190, 192, 193; 
Toombs's doubt as to the party's 
purposes, 197, 198, 204, 206; at- 
titude of members in the Senate 
committee of thirteen, 207-211; 
reconstruction programme, 258, 
259; Liberal Republican move- 
ment, 267; enlightened policy of 
Hayes, 268, 269 

Rhett, Robert Barnwell, 35, 53- 
55, 95, loi, 229 

Rhodes', J. F., History of the United 
States, criticized, 56, 57 

Scott, Winfield, nomination of, 109; 
Toombs repudiates the ticket, 
I10-I14 

Seabrook, Whitemarsh B., 53 

Sectionalism, crux of, in control- 
ling the U. S. Senate, 49 

Seddon, James A., 87 

Semmes, Raphael, 232 

Seward, William H., 64, 65, 79, 116, 
117, 126, 172, 183, 187, 206, 
210, 230 

Sherman, John, 181, 183 



Slaveholding regime, Toombs's 
addresses on the (1853 and 1856), 
155-166 

Slavery, controversy between 
Georgia and Maine, 23; the 
twenty-first rule, 35; Toombs 
on the territorial question, 41-43, 
68-70, 81, 82; problem of con- 
trolling the Senate, 49, 50; pro- 
gramme of the " radical political 
abolitionists," 50, 51; the issue 
paramount, 53; the Wilmot 
proviso, 55-57, 59; President 
Taylor's attitude, 64-66; com- 
promise of 1850, 73-88; the 
Georgia platform, 97-99; the 
Scott-Pierce campaign, 113, 114; 
the Kansas-Nebraska bill, 117- 
122; emigration to Kansas, 122, 
123; the Toombs bill for the 
admission of Kansas, 124-128; 
the English bill, 128-130; 
Toombs's lectures on the slave- 
holding regime, 155-166; the 
rise of the Republican party, 
168-170; the Dred Scott decision, 
172; Toombs's criticisms of the 
Republican party, 179-183, 185- 
187, 200, 202, 209, 210; Georgia 
county resolutions, 212-214; 
statement of "rebel" demands 
by Toombs, 217-219 

Slaves, fugitive, rendition ques- 
tion, 54 

Slave-trade, in the District of 
Columbia, 54, 61, 88 

Slidell, John, 116 

Smith, Gerritt, 50, 137 

Smith, Truman, 35 

Soule, Pierre, 54 

South, political problems of the 
planters, 25; alternative policies, 
available in response to the abo- 
lition agitation, 51-54; Calhoun's 
project for a block in Congress, 
60-64; Toombs takes the lead in 
aggressive defense, 68; secession 
movement, of 1848-1852, 91- 
95, 105, 106; endorsement of the 
Kansas-Nebraska bill, 120; ten- 
dency of Whigs to join the Demo- 
cratic party, 169; apprehensions 
at the growth of the Republican 



INDEX 



279 



party, 172; position in i860 ana- 
lyzed by Toombs, 179-183; pol- 
icy in the conduct of the U. S. 
government described by Toombs, 
185, 186; secession movement of 
1860-1861, 196-222; "rebel" 
demands stated by Toombs, 217- 
219; Montgomery convention, 
222-230; the war for independ- 
ence, 232-251; reconstruction, 
252-268 

South Carolina, resistance resolu- 
tions adopted by the legislature 
(1848), 91; convention of 1852 
decides not to secede, 106; seces- 
sion of, 207, 214, 215 

Southern address of 1849, 50; of 
1850, 93; of i860, 205, 206 

Stephens, Alexander H., 43, 57, 
67, 74, 82-85, 189, 199, 205, 214, 
228, 229, 241, 261; at college, 
12; beginning of friendship with 
Toombs, 17, 18; in Georgia leg- 
islature, 19-23; joins the Whig 
party, 30, 33; enters Congress, 
34; on the Mexican war, 52; 
opposes the Clayton compro- 
mise bill, 56, 57; on the question 
of Southern independence (1840), 
92, 93 ; campaigns for the endorse- 
ment of the compromise of 1850, 
95-98; aids in launching the Con- 
stitutional Union party (1850), 
99, 106; opposes the Know- 
nothing movement, and joins 
the Democratic party, 168, 169; 
retires from Congress, 173-175; 
supports Douglas for President, 
190-192; opposes secession, 201- 
203; elected Vice-President of 
the Confederacy, 225; alienated 
from Davis, 246; participates 
in the lease of the Western and 
Atlantic railroad, 265, 266; dies, 
272 

Sumner, Charles, loi, 116, 118, 126 

Tariff issue in Georgia (1828- 
1833), 9, 14, 18; Toombs's atti- 
tude on protection, 38, 39, 148- 
150 

Taylor, Zachary, Toombs advo- 
cates nomination of, 48; elected 



President, 58, 59; administra- 
tion of, 64-66, 82-85 

Territories, question of slavery in 
New Mexico and Utah, 42, 43, 
54, 55, 61, 81 

Texas, annexation of, 35, 39, 40, 
52; New Mexico boundary ques- 
tion, 83-85, 87, 88 

Thompson, Jacob, 35, 215 

Tilden, Samuel J., 268 

Toombs bill, for the admission of 
Kansas, 124-128 

Toombs, Gabriel, 237 

Toombs, Robert, birth, 6; rearing, 
7, II; political antecedents, 8- 
10; at the University of Georgia, 
11-13; further education, 14; 
admission to the bar, 14, 15; 
marriage and home life, 15; 
characteristics as a lawyer, 16, 
17; beginning of friendship with 
Stephens, 17, 18; in the Georgia 
legislature, 19-24; elected to 
Congress, 24; campaigns for 
Harrison and Tyler, 32; speech 
on Oregon, 36, 37; speech on the 
tariff (1846), 38; promotes Whig 
solidarity, 39; views on Texan 
annexation, 39, 52; on Mexican 
relations, 39, 41, 42, 45; on the 
two-million bill, 40, 41; on the 
ten-regiment bill, 41-43; inter- 
course with constituents, 44; 
assiduity in House routine, 44, 
45; on congressional expenditures, 
45-47; on the army and navy, 
46; on congressional proprieties, 
47; championship of Southern 
rights, 42, 43, 48; on the alter- 
native policies available for the 
South, 51-55; on the Wilmot pro- 
viso, 54; on the Clayton compro- 
mise, 56, 57; advocates nomina- 
tion and election of Zachary 
Taylor, 48, 58, 59; opposes a 
Southern block in Congress, 60, 
61; supports Preston's bill for 
California statehood, 62-64; re- 
lations with Taylor, 64-66, 82- 
85; obstructs election of Speaker, 
66-73; on the California bill, 
75-78; "Hamilcar" speech, 81, 
82; promotes the adoption of the 



28o 



INDEX 



compromise measures of 1850, 
86-90; campaigns in Georgia for 
the endorsement of the compro- 
mise, 95-98; aids in launching 
the Constitutional Union party, 
99-102, 106; elected to the U. S. 
Senate, 105; repudiates the nom- 
ination of Scott, 110-114; speech 
on the nature of parties, iii, 
112; on the Kansas-Nebraska 
bill, 118, 121; on disturbances 
in Kansas, 124, 129; introduces 
the Toombs bill for the admission 
of Kansas, 124-126; attitude 
toward military appropriations, 
131; on pensions, 132; on river- 
and-harbor bills, 133-138; on 
the Galphin claim, 138-144; on 
the naval retiring board, 145- 
148; on the Harlan contested 
election, 148; speech on the tariff, 
(1859), 148-150; J. C. Reed's 
characterization of his non-sec- 
tional activities in the Senate, 
150-154; views on slavery, 155- 
166; denounces Know-nothing- 
ism, 168, 169; on Douglas and 
the Dred Scott decision, 177, 178; 
"doorsill" speech (January, 
i860) on the state of the coun- 
try, 179-183; opposes the Davis 
resolutions, 184; on the South 
and the Republican party, 185- 
187; in the campaign of i860, 
191, 192; advocacy of secession, 
196-206, 209-211; in the Senate 
committee of thirteen, 206-211; 
telegram to the people of Georgia, 
209, 210; farewell speech in 
the Senate, 216-219; work in 
the Georgia secession convention, 
219-222; in the Confederate con- 
vention at Montgomery, 222-230; 
defeated for the presidency of 
the Confederate States, 223-227; 
appointed Confederate Secretary 
of State, 227, 228; assists in 
framing the Permanent Consti- 
tution of the Confederate States, 
228-230; work as Secretary of 
State, 230-237; opposes attack 
on Fort Sumter, 233-235; ap- 
pointed brigadier-general, 237, 



238; elected to Confederate Sen- 
ate, 240, 241; declines to serve, 
241; in battle of Malvern Hill, 
243, 244; at Antietam, 245; 
resigns command, 245, 246; 
criticizes policies of Davis, 246- 
249; resists policy of restricting 
cotton production, 247; declines 
to run for governorship of 
Georgia, 247; proposes financial 
reforms for the Confederacy, 
249; defeated for Confederate 
Senate, 250; serves as colonel in 
Georgia State Guard, 250, 251; 
in exile, 254-257; attitude toward 
reconstruction, 255-269; never 
regains citizenship, 257; rebuilds 
law practise, 258; promotes and 
controls the framing of a new 
Georgia state constitution, 269- 
272; death, 273 
Towns, George W., 95 
Troup, George M., 8, 9, 30, 31 
Troup party in Georgia, 8, 14, 18 
Tugalo Democrats, in Georgia, 108- 

IIO 

Tyler, John, 28-33 

University of Georgia, Toombs a 

student at, 11-14 
Underwood, John W. H., 90 

Van Buren, Martin, 18, 29-31, 59, 
60 

Wade, Benjamin F., 116, 136, 152, 

185, 187 
Walker, Robert J., 170 
Washington, Georgia, early life in, 

Webster, Daniel, 29, 54, 79, no 

Weed, Thurlow, 58 

Western and Atlantic railroad, 2i, 
22,265, 266 

Whig party. State Rights party in 
Georgia joins the fusion, 18; con- 
servatism in financial policy, 21, 
22; influence of plantation inter- 
ests, 25; heterogeneous coalition, 
27-29; abandoned by Calhoun, 
Wise, Tyler, Hunter, Colquitt, 
Cooper and Black, 29-31; cam- 
paign of 1840, 31, 32; Stephens 



INDEX 



281 



and Toombs sent to Congress, 
34; party solidarity promoted 
by Toombs, 38-43; campaign of 
1848, 48, 58, 59; anti-slavery 
wing controls Taylor, 64-66; the 
speakership contest of 1849, 66- 
73; Toombs and Stephens re- 
monstrate with Taylor, 82-85; 
Fillmore's accession, 85; fusion 
of Whigs and Union Democrats 
in Georgia, 94-96, 99, 100, 103- 
108; restoration of Whig align- 
ment, 107, 108; Toombs and 
Stephens repudiate the nomina- 



tion of Scott, I10-114; they 
attempt to heal the schism, 167; 
but the party is wrecked by the 
wrangle over the Kansas- 
Nebraska bill, 167, 168 

Wilmot, David, 35, d"], 73 

Wilmot proviso, 35, 41-43, 48, 52, 

„ 55-57 

Winthrop, Robert C, 35, 40, 67, 

73> loi 
Wise, Henry A., 28 

Yancey, William Lowndes, 29, 34, 
S3. 54. 95. loi. 105. 172. 188, 190 



A HISTORY OF TRANSPORTATION IN 
THE EASTERN COTTON BELT TO i860 

By ULRICH BONNELL PHILLIPS, Ph.D. 

Cloth, i2mo., ^2.75 net 

"There is no more interesting or important phase of 
American economic history than is presented by the origin 
and development of transportation. The history of high- 
ways, canals and railroads in the South before the Civil War 
had received little attention before Professor Phillips took 
up the study. . . . One can easily share some of the enthu- 
siasm which causes Professor Phillips to say: 'To me the 
antehellum South is the most interesting theme in the history 
of this continent.' . . . 

"After an introduction of twenty pages giving a general 
survey of the transportation problem in the South, Professor 
Phillips devotes two chapters to highway and canal develop- 
ment .... prior to 1830. Then follow accounts of the 
Charleston and Hamburg Railroad and the premature 
Charleston project, the Georgia Railroad and Banking Com- 
pany, the Central of Georgia system, the Western and Atlan- 
tic (built by Georgia) and various minor branch roads. The 
concluding chapter describes the beginning made during the 
five years before the war in the integration and cooperation 
of the hitherto independent roads and summarize the effect 
of the railways upon the social and economic organization. . . . 

" Professor Phillips has written a scholarly book rich in 
detail. He has placed students of social as well as economic 
history under lasting obligations." — Professor Emory John- 
son of the University of Pennsylvania, in the Journal of 
Political Economy. 

" The western parts of the Carolinas, like upper Virginia, 
were gradually drawn to the support of the low-country, or 
the cotton and tobacco belts, and consequently of slavery, 
through state systems of internal improvements, promised or 
executed, or through the steady encroachments of the cotton 
and tobacco planters upon the poorer, idealistic up-country. 
Of none of these have we adequate accounts, save in Pro- 
fessor Phillips's Transportation in the Eastern Cotton Belt." 
— Professor William E. Dodd of the University of Chicago, 
in the American Historical Review. 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 64-66 FIFTH AVENUE NEW YORK 






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